A Likely Story
by Apothecaria
Summary: Romance blooms between Severus and Tonks, but this fluff free fic centers on the adult HP characters. Warning for SeverusSirius snark, naughty language, poisonous mushrooms, and disgusting ingredients. It's OoP, so it's still canon.
1. Chapter 1

When he wanted to see me, Dumbledore would usually firecall me to his office, or Floo to mine. But today, he said, go to 12 Grimmauld Place, and wait in the kitchen. I could guess why, but hoped I was wrong.

Unfortunately, I'm rarely wrong. To my utter lack of surprise, Sirius Black was in the kitchen already, sitting at the end of the table. A copy of the Daily Prophet was in front of him, opened to the crossword puzzle. I was also not surprised to see that Black was not alone. Tonks sat in the middle chair, her hair some revolting colour I couldn't name. Puce, maybe? As I entered, Black was smiling at her in a highly inappropriate way, considering the girl is his cousin. He looked up at me and stopped smiling, then stared back down at the newspaper.

"Tea, Severus?" Tonks asked, lifting a teapot. "I made it fit to dissolve a spoon."

Who told her how I like my tea? Dumbledore usually respects my desire for privacy.

I glared at her while she poured a cup and somehow managed to hand it to me without dropping or spilling it, meeting my glare with a cheeky grin. "I don't need an Auror to protect me from Black. At least, not lately." I sipped from the cup. I like my tea strong enough to permanently stain my teeth, so this tea was perfect. Not that I was going to tell her.

"Maybe there needs to be an Auror to protect Sirius from you," Tonks replied.

"Hey!" protested Black eloquently.

"Dumbledore trusts me," I retorted.

Black snorted. "Nobody's perfect," he muttered.

Immediately I restrained myself, unclenching my right hand and removing it from a particular pocket. Tonks was there, after all, not just to make sure we didn't hex each other, but as an observer. She would observe me, and see a picture of restraint.

She would observe Black, and see what I wanted her to see.

I walked casually around the table, opposite to where Tonks sat watching me avidly, and looked down at the crossword puzzle in front of Black.

"Thirty-six down is 'Snorkack.' Obviously," I said. Mindful of Tonks' presence, I was trying not to smirk too broadly.

Black's years in Azkaban have left him teetering on the brink of insanity, but he's not as stupid as he looks. He glared at me for a moment, then forced himself to stay in his seat and look back down at the crossword.

"Doesn't fit," he said in an extremely quiet voice quivering with suppressed anger.

"Yes it does, if you knew how to spell. S-N-O..."

I was interrupted by the kitchen door opening and Dumbledore sweeping in. Black quickly composed his face into an appearance of bland unconcern.

Too late, Black; he saw your ugly sneer. Not for nothing am I a master of goading people into an incoherent rage.

Dumbledore glanced at each of us in greeting, but avoided my gaze for some reason. He nodded briefly at Tonks, who abruptly stood, catching her chair just before it went over, and left the kitchen without another word.

Dumbledore poured himself a cup of tea and sat in the chair vacated by Tonks.

"Gentlemen," he began, sipping his tea before grimacing and adding a generous spoonful of sugar. "You are both under a considerable amount of stress. If I were able to give you holidays, I would send you both far away from this place, and each other. But there is no rest for any of us these days. I have to be able to trust you both, and not rely upon students to prevent you from hexing each other. Sirius!" His voice sharpened as he spoke Black's name. I was careful not to smirk.

"You know," Dumbledore continued, "that Severus is a very dangerous man."

"So am I," Black protested.

Now I was really struggling not to smirk.

"Of that there is no doubt," said Dumbledore evenly. "But you know the nature of his role in the Order and the abilities he has that make that role possible. Severus is more dangerous than you are. You must avoid provoking him at all costs."

Black flushed and stared at the floor, unseated by Dumbledore's bluntness. I can easily keep my face free of all expression, of course, but I was staggered. I am accustomed to every sort of insult, but praise comes my way all too infrequently, and coming from the most powerful wizard in the world, it almost brought me to my knees. What a truly great man. A man who has been like a father to me.

I should have known it was too good to be true. My whole life has been like that.

Dumbledore abruptly turned around, catching me sneering gleefully at Black. Whoops. "And as for YOU!" He rose to his rather considerable height and placed his hands flat on the table, leaning towards me. "This sort of thing was bad enough when you were sixteen, but now that you are old enough to understand the consequences, it is especially disappointing. As a master of Hogwarts school, you are expected to set a proper example, and not engage in dangerous and impulsive behaviour. What if Harry had been harmed? And all because you couldn't put personal feelings aside for a few minutes. Shame on you!" He wasn't yelling, but his voice dropped towards the end, to an emphatic near-whisper. Despite his harsh words, he was regarding me with so much care and concern I could feel myself blushing. Only the headmaster still had the ability to make me feel twelve years old.

I looked at Black, and he had carefully composed his face into a look of humble neutrality, but his eyes revealed all the smugness he was careful to conceal. Damn him. Once again, I get into trouble for defending myself, while Black gets a slap on the wrist, and a Potter comes off looking the hero.

Dumbledore stood up straight to look at us both. He gestured at the door to open it, and Tonks stumbled in. Dumbledore smiled indulgently at her. As if it's funny that the defense of the wizard world rests upon the likes of witches who can barely manage to put one foot in front of the other.

Dumbledore turned his deceptively benevolent gaze towards me. "Coming, Severus?" he inquired mildly. But it was not a request.

I followed him as he Disapparated, and to my surprise, we were in the middle of Hogsmeade instead of at the castle gates outside the anti-Apparation wards.

He turned to me abruptly. "Go get yourself a drink. You need it." And he Disapparated before I could protest.

He stalked into the Hogs Head, throwing off his cloak as he entered. It was the kind of place where everybody ignored you except the barman. In other words, the perfect pub. Just so long as you performed a Cleaning Charm on your glass before your drink was poured.

The barman regarded him with oddly penetrating blue eyes.

"Firewhisky," Snape demanded wearily, and sat on a stool, right elbow propped on the bar, his chin resting on his right hand, his left hand in his lap. Though he was completely covered from neck to wrists to feet, out of force of habit he kept his left arm down.

The barman nodded, lifting the bottle already in his hand. He poured the drink quickly, pausing beforehand just long enough to allow the customer to cast a Cleaning Charm on the glass, before retreating to the other side of the pub.

The door swung open and everybody looked up in mild surprise as an improbably beautiful woman entered. She wore a simple green robe that emphasised the shimmering auburn hair falling nearly to her waist. Her flawless complexion almost seemed to glow in the dim light of the pub.

After briefly glancing around, she walked towards the saturnine man in black robes at the end of the bar.

Ever since the Barty Crouch debacle, Snape checked everyone's eyes to be certain of the identity of the person behind them. He looked into the woman's large turquoise eyes and scowled. "You couldn't have drawn more attention to yourself if you'd walked in on the Dark Lord's arm, _Tonks," _he hissed.

She smoothed her robe a bit self-consciously and sat on the stool next to him. By way of making conversation, she said, "My cousin can be a complete prat sometimes."

He snorted. "Only sometimes?" He turned to face the bar and sipped his drink, looking forwards rather vacantly at the bottles behind the bar, the way people do when they are drinking alone.

Seated parallel to him, she regarded those same bottles. "You two have a lot in common."

He made a choking noise. "It's none of your business," he said rather hoarsely. "And I _don't_ want to talk about it." He turned to face her. His black eyes raked her from head to foot, his face expressionless, as if she were an interesting specimen that should be pickled, bottled, and stored on a shelf in a dungeon office. "Are you supposed to _cheer me up, _or something? He knows me better than that. Not that it stops him from trying."

"Would you rather I approached you as an Auror?"

He was silent for a moment, sipping his drink. Then he cast a Confabulating Charm, which mixes up voices and fabricates an entirely different conversation, somehow matching the vocal sounds with the lip movements of the conversants. In this case, anyone trying to listen would hear a conversation about Quidditch. Incongruous, but less likely to arouse suspicion than silence.

He finished his drink in a swallow, not bothering to grimace. "Frankly, yes, I'd rather you approached me as an Auror. The more I am perceived as mistrusted by the ministry, the more credibility I have in...other quarters." He paused as the barman refilled his glass and turned to regard her critically. "You're a prostitute, then?" he ventured.

"A very high-class one. The sort that only goes with pure-bloods. But still affordable by a Hogwarts professor. And you won't have to justify this meeting to anybody."

He scowled. "If there was nobody meeting me at all, there would be nothing to justify. In fact, it would be preferable if you arrested me. What couldn't wait until the next meeting?"

She smiled brightly, enormous eyes sparkling, leaning forwards as if she were encouraging him to look down her cleavage at the lacy black bustier she had Transfigured from the plain white cotton sports bra she normally wore for work. "Buy me a drink?" she asked.

His face was like stone. Then he said, "If you are as expensive as you say, you can buy your own drinks."

She took a deep breath and reminded herself a little angrily that she was an Auror, and not a firstie who was going to lose lots of points and maybe earn a detention for melting a cauldron in double Potions with the Slytherins. "Tomorrow you must go with me when I buy a Christmas present for Harry Potter."

He didn't react immediately. Then, to her alarm, he actually chuckled. "You don't have the authority to send me anywhere. Or does the headmaster think I have been insufficiently chastised?" He looked pensively at his drink for a moment. "If Potter hadn't stopped me, Black would have learned something. And I wouldn't have hurt him." He smirked slightly. "Not badly. Though he would have bitterly regretted it, the next time he tried turning into a dog."

Trying not to think about what sort of curse her cousin narrowly escaped, Tonks said, "Since the attack on Arthur, Albus has worried about our personal safety, and has assigned partners who have to accompany us whenever we go anywhere, as far as possible. For instance, Kingsley is with Arthur, Molly is with Sirius, and I, well, am with..."

"What is this rubbish?" he snapped, and gulped the rest of his drink.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a mirror, handing it to him. "You use this to tell me if you're going anywhere. We don't have to be side by side. If, say, you have to go to the apothecary in Diagon Alley to pick up supplies, I could be browsing in shop windows nearby. Or I could be in Auror robes, tailing you in a casual but obvious sort of way."

He regarded the mirror in her hand with the sort of derision he might normally reserve for something cute and fluffy. "Fascinating," he spat. "'Worried about our personal safety?' My job is to put myself in harm's way." He looked into the gloom behind the bar and the barman suddenly re-appeared. "Leave the bottle," he snapped at the barman, who complied before disappearing again.

"Just because the headmaster thinks it is a good idea doesn't mean it is." He poured himself another shot and drank it. All that firewhisky doesn't seem to have any effect on him, thought Tonks. Maybe he's used some sort of potion, but then why bother drinking at all if you're going to take something to cancel it out?

He regarded her with those fathomless black eyes. "Your dear uncle Lucius, on top of his usual paranoia, is convinced that you are being used in some covert assignment against the Dark Lord. And then you'll be seen following me all over? Or I'll be observed with all these ... singular-looking witches nobody has ever remembered seeing before? I don't think so." He drained his glass again, and refilled it with a remorselessly steady hand. "If you die on my account, it will mean a lot of tedious paperwork, and Albus will likely assign someone in your place who is even worse than you."

"Albus cares about your safety, even if you don't," she said, wondering where that had come from.

The firewhisky finally seemed to be working. He stood carefully, steadying himself against the bar. His gaze did not waver, but she thought she saw something else in his eyes for a moment. "The sooner you get out of my presence, the safer you will be." He tossed a handful of coins on the bar, took out his wand and was gone before she could protest with the usual cautions against drinking and Disapparating.

Next day, Tonks was firecalled to 12 Grimmauld Place. She tiptoed through the front door and was quietly and carefully hanging up her cloak when the door slammed behind her. Startled, she stumbled against the troll leg umbrella stand, and once again it fell with a wood-splintering crash. Once again, she wondered despairingly why wizards would need umbrellas, or stands to put them in, when water-repelling charms were simple for just about everybody and more effective than umbrellas.

The curtain flew open in front of Mrs Black's portrait, who rolled her eyes towards Tonks.

"Half-breed filth!" she screeched.

"Oh, bugger," muttered Tonks.

Snape stepped beside her, sneering a little wearily at the portrait. "Do shut the fuck up, you tediously hideous hag," he said lazily, and grabbed the curtains to close them.

Mrs Black rolled her wild-eyed gaze towards him. "Foul-mouthed traitor! Murderer!" she yelled.

_"Murderer?"_ he echoed, letting go of the curtains. "That's rich, coming from you!" Eyes narrowing, he took out his wand.

"Penniless groveler! Too bad your father drank the family fortune. Your blood's as good as Malfoy's, but instead you have to lick his boots!" She cackled wildly.

His eyes blazed. "Why you dried-up old ..." he was raising his wand when someone yelled, "SEVERUS!"

Dumbledore strode down the hallway and closed the curtains with a casual flick of his wand. Turning to Snape, he said, "Any one of us would have done what you were about to do months ago, if the Permanent Sticking Charm behind that portrait wasn't inextricably linked to the concealing wards about this house. Come, have some tea." He gestured to the door into the kitchen.

As they followed Dumbledore into the kitchen, Snape turned to Tonks and whispered, "You will not repeat what you saw to anybody."

"Of course not, Severus," she whispered in reply. But he had already turned his back to her and was striding aggressively into the kitchen.

Dumbledore bade them to sit and poured them cups of tea. "Sirius is feeding the hippogriff, and will otherwise stay upstairs while we are here."

Snape nodded impatiently, hiding his relief at not having to confront Sirius. "If I might speak, Headmaster..."

Dumbledore held up his hand. "Severus, I knew you would have considerable resistance to my idea, and I wasn't sure if it would be prudent to include you in the new partnership system. Like you told Miss Tonks, your unique role presents us with challenges. Nonetheless, I have decided to include you because you are no less deserving of protection than any other Order member."

"I beg your pardon? Surely forcing me to stay in contact with someone in the Order will only present me with one more connection to conceal, and one more opportunity for exposure. For instance, what if she tries to contact me when I am in the presence of the Dark Lord?"

Dumbledore replied smoothly, "The mirror is your only method of contacting your partner outside the usual ways of communication. If you are summoned, simply don't take the mirror with you. If you are caught by surprise, contrive to smash it."

Snape glanced briefly at Tonks. "Smashing things is rather more in character for _some_ people." He looked back to Dumbledore and folded his arms, looking somewhat petulant. "I still don't see how it keeps me safer, giving me one more thing to remember."

Dumbledore smiled at the younger man glowering at him. "Ah, but that's because I haven't yet explained how it works. These partnerships are more than just an agreement between two people. It is magically binding. It's a variant on the Fidelius Charm, in which your partner acts as your Secret Keeper."

Snape continued to scowl, but sat back in his chair, tracing his lips with a finger while he thought. "So ... are you saying that you have figured out a way to make human beings ... Unplottable?"

Tonks said, "You can only be tracked by your partner. Who will also be alerted if you are in mortal peril."

Snape sat silently for a moment, then his mouth fell open in astonishment. "If I am discovered ..."

She replied, "If you are discovered, I will know immediately, and will alert the Order. And we will all know where you are, through me."

But Snape was shaking his head. "You can't be risking yourselves on my account before Potter is ready. It will only result in pointless deaths."

Tonks protested, "Who says you will be discovered before Harry is ready? Or that you'll be discovered at all?"

He was no longer scowling, but looked at her expressionlessly, his black eyes even more inscrutable. Then he addressed Dumbledore. "What happens when the term starts? Is she to follow me around at Hogwarts?"

"She will come to Hogwarts sometimes, under the guise of investigating you." Dumbledore regarded him silently for a moment before continuing. "Severus, as you know, I have been unable, after all these years, to get your file at the ministry closed. Well, now we can use that to our advantage. Moody and Shacklebolt are making sure that Tonks gets 'assigned' to your case."

Snape said thoughtfully, "Yes, well, I don't have the gold that some people have to buy the minister's trust."

Dumbledore said gently, "And if the attack on Arthur has taught us anything, it's that we can't have Harry thinking he needs to maintain his link with Voldemort in order to ensure our safety."

Wincing at hearing "Voldemort," Snape replied, "Somehow I don't think Potter is overly concerned with my safety. And besides, surely you're not going to tell him about this new arrangement. Are you?"

"I will tell him that we are taking extra precautions. And you will explain to him in the Occlumency lessons how important it is to sever that link, using the reason we discussed."

But now Snape was smirking. "When Potter is ready to face the Dark Lord, I shall reveal myself as a traitor at the next Summons, thus placing myself in mortal peril. Through Tonks, all of you will easily be able to find the Dark Lord, and bring Potter along for the final battle. Well done, Albus. It's a plan worthy of a Slytherin."

Tonks looked horrified, but Dumbledore only looked sad. "I suspected you would think of that. Let's hope such a strategy never needs to be used."

"Surely you wouldn't do something like that, Severus!" Tonks exclaimed.

"It's unlikely, because I don't believe Potter will ever be ready to face the Dark Lord," he replied smoothly. She looked back at him skeptically.

Snape looked from Tonks to Dumbledore. "I agree to this arrangement," he said smoothly, and took a sip of tea, grimacing at its bland sweetness.

Dumbledore looked older and more tired than usual. "I can't stop you from reaching your own conclusions."

Tonks said, with false brightness. "So are we going to Diagon Alley now?"

Snape sneered. "To buy a Christmas present for Potter? _Must_ I accompany you?"

Dumbledore spread his hands apart. "The charm is strengthened, the more time you spend in the presence of your partner."

Tonks said, "For today, I thought I'd go as myself. And you could look annoyed and angry, like you're being forced to have an Auror escort. Can you do that, Severus?"

He regarded her sardonically. "Let's get this over with, shall we?" he sighed, rising from his chair.

They Apparated to Diagon Alley. Snape assumed his usual soundless, rapid stride, forcing Tonks into a half-run to keep up.

"Will you slow down?" Tonks gasped. "I feel like I'm following you to the dungeons for detention."

He raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing, and slowed his pace marginally. And then he suddenly stopped and turned. Tonks almost ran into his side.

"If you can't find anything suitable here, you will have to get him something at the apothecary shop, where we're going next before I return to Hogwarts." And he swept into the shop without looking to see if Tonks followed.

She looked up at the sign over the shop's doorway. "Not a bad idea, actually." And she entered Flourish and Blotts.

Tonks had found one of the last hardback copies of Imagining the Animagi, a popular novel for young wizards that Ron had assured her Harry wanted, and went to find Snape, who was browsing through the magazines in the Potions section.

He looked up from the latest issue of "Subtle Poisons and Their Antidotes Quarterly." Smirking, he said, "I found the perfect book for Potter," and handed her a copy of Remedial Potions: Help for the Hapless.

"Thanks Severus. I already found something," she said in a neutral tone in case he wasn't joking. His sense of humour was unpredictable at best.

"Right. The headmaster has asked me to pick up some replacements for the Restricted section. A surprising number of books from that section seem to get lost or damaged, considering they are, well, restricted."

"Do they still have that Screaming Charm on the books if an unauthorized student tries to read one?" Tonks reminisced.

He made a noise that sounded like an affirmative, and said, "I would put a more creative hex on those books. Something more memorable, and therefore, more corrective, but the headmaster continues to brush aside my best ideas."

Tonks grinned. "Probably he thinks your classes are enough of a strain on the hospital wing as it is."

He had his back to her, selecting a book off the shelf. He replied mildly, "The headmaster and most of the other teachers refuse to acknowledge that some students need something more ... compelling to discourage them from inappropriate behaviour." He turned abruptly to look pointedly at her.

Tonks' grin turned a little sheepish. "I still wonder how you knew it was me, even before the real Filch came round that corner."

"Other than your signature trail of destruction?" he smirked. "Filch isn't usually afraid of his own cat."

While they were talking, they moved slowly amongst the stacks of books. He had selected several, and they made their way to the front to pay.

"Damn!" Tonks muttered, looking into her purse. Snape looked askance at her.

"I stepped on my handbag earlier, breaking a mirror. No, not _that_ mirror. I didn't have time to find all the pieces for a Reparo, so I just switched handbags, and I forgot to transfer my money over. Severus--would you mind? I'll pay you back later."

He glared at her in astonishment. "You want ME to ... PAY ... for POTTER'S Christmas present?" he sputtered. "It'll be a cold day in..."

"Otherwise, we'll have to come back later."

"No. YOU can come back later."

"No. Albus insists. We have to be with our partners when we are out in public."

"I don't have time for this," he hissed. He reached into a pocket of his robes and brought out a handful of coins, throwing them down angrily, sending some of them flying off the counter, forcing the clerk to scramble after them as they went rolling about on the floor.

"Thanks, Severus. I won't tell anybody."

Package of books tucked under his arm, he was already striding out the door. Children and adults alike scattered from his path as he swept down Diagon Alley, a fury in swirling black robes and menacing scowl.


	2. Chapter 2

A Summons and Poisonous Mushrooms

He arrived back at Hogwarts in a headlong rush, almost smashing through the wards to his private rooms in his haste to get inside without being seen. At least Hagrid didn't have to carry him this time.

Throwing off his cloak, he gestured wandlessly at a wooden cabinet with badly-shaking hands. It took a couple of tries before the cabinet door opened, revealing an array of bottles. He considered them for a moment before selecting a very old single malt scotch Minerva had given him for Christmas and carefully poured himself a generous shot, managing not to spill any.

Over the past couple of years, he had discovered that two or three shots of very good scotch quelled the shaking and cramping that constituted the aftereffects of the Cruciatus curse almost as well as the potions specifically brewed for that purpose, and tasted a hell of a lot better.

Soon enough, there was a knock at the door. "Come in," he said almost inaudibly, knowing his visitors would enter whether invited or not.

Albus Dumbledore and Poppy Pomfrey swept in, worried looks on their faces. They saw him sitting more or less upright in his chair and smiled. Dumbledore gestured at the fireplace and a cheery blaze sprang forth.

Madame Pomfrey waved her wand over him from head to toe. "No fractures this time. But if you turn around, I may be able to help your back."

Sitting stiffly, he protested, "There's nothing wrong with my back."

Dumbledore said, "Severus."

Snape heaved a sigh. Shifting slowly and awkwardly in his chair, he turned slightly and leaned forwards to rest his hands on his knees. Madame Pomfrey examined him quickly, frowned, muttered a spell, and exchanged a look with Dumbledore.

"All done," she said. "But it's only temporary."

Dumbledore regarded him piercingly. "Severus, you really must reconsider..."

"Have a drink." interrupted Snape coldly. He leaned back into the chair and gestured with a trembling hand. Though the trembling was much less marked. "It's not like I could stop you."

"There's no discussing it with you, is there?" said Madame Pomfrey, shaking her head and pocketing her wand. "If nothing else, I must insist you have breakfast tomorrow. Something with..."

He made an expression of distaste. "I know, lots of protein."

She smiled at him sadly. "Good night, then."

"I'll have that drink," said Dumbledore, re-warding the door after Madame Pomfrey and conjuring himself a glass and a plush chair.

The two men sipped their drinks in companionable silence for several minutes. Snape's trembling disappeared, even when he held his hands out at arm's length, his fingertips pointing up.

"I've been hit with it so many times," Snape said dryly, lowering his arms and picking up his drink again, "that I hardly feel it anymore."

"My friend at St. Mungo's..." ventured Dumbledore.

"Is one more person to get involved." Snape finished smoothly. "You sometimes seem to forget I'm a Slytherin. I'll get myself looked after. It just may not be until the war is over." He looked around for the bottle. Dumbledore brought it back over and refilled Snape's glass.

As Dumbledore was walking back to his chair, he asked, "What made Tom so upset tonight?"

Snape sighed. "I didn't do anything. And that was the problem. Remember me telling you how Macnair has a taste for hallucinogenic mushrooms?"

Dumbledore smiled. "That Muggles call, 'Magic Mushrooms?'"

Snape nodded. "Yes, well, Muggles think the name is just a metaphor. Anyway, Macnair stumbled across what he thought was a bumper crop of them beside a path in a forest on his way to an execution. He gathered and dried them, and invited a few of the others with similar proclivities to partake with him. To make a long story short, he mistook _Amanita phalloides _for _Amanita muscaria._ He and four other Death Eaters are laid up in St. Mungo's for at least another ten days, having their livers and kidneys re-grown."

Dumbledore frowned. "That's a rather drastic mistake. If I recall, those two species look rather different."

"Yes, well, most of the Death Eaters barely have one brain between the lot of them. Kind of works out to my advantage, most of the time. _He's_ willing to overlook minor doubts _he_ might have about me for the sake of having someone with actual professional qualifications working for him. There are more than enough of the bumbling murderous thugs as it is."

Dumbledore nodded in understanding. "But in this case your skills worked against you. And considering it relates to your field of expertise..."

"Precisely. Macnair gathered the mushrooms some time ago, and dried them, and was talking about them incessantly. And I never bothered to look at them." Snape frowned. "_He_ was asking me if I did see the mushrooms."

"Did you?"

Snape snorted. "If I had, his questioning would have tested the limits of my Occlumentic skills." He sighed. "I avoided having a conversation about the mushrooms with Macnair. He would be telling me how great mushrooms are and how fantastic it is to kill things whilst under the influence of mushrooms. That one must pair the right psychoactive substance with the particular sort of animal one is executing in order to achieve the most euphoric experience, and so forth. So no, I never looked at the mushrooms. _He _had to make sure that I was not deliberately making myself scarce. Just as I was not around to make the potion that restored him to a physical form."

Dumbledore said, "Sounds like he suspects your absences are a little too convenient."

"Well, he would be right, wouldn't he?" said Snape bitterly. "He continues to be irritated with me about the circumstances around his 'rebirth.'"

Dumbledore smiled slightly. "Wormtail rather botched that potion, didn't he?"

Snape nodded. "Now there's a man with bitter regrets."

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "Indeed?"

But Snape did not elaborate, instead drinking silently for a moment before continuing. "When I first met _him_, he was, well, a normal-looking middle-aged man, rather charming. He would offer around the fine cognac, and sit and talk with everybody in an almost casual sort of way. He was vastly well-read and could converse on any subject. And he really seemed to listen when people spoke." He sipped his drink "Early on, you could even disagree with him if your argument was intelligent enough."

Dumbledore said, "Only introducing you to the more extreme actions and ideologies of the organisation after you were branded."

Snape looked pensive for a moment before continuing. "It's still strange to me that such an intelligent man would hold these ridiculous, simple-minded beliefs."

Dumbledore nodded. "Stranger still to those of us who taught him."

Snape smirked. "It's a bit harder to recruit new followers to your cause when you look like the love child of a basilisk and Wendolin the Weird."

Dumbledore laughed. "Yes, well, now he looks like what's in his heart." There was a knock at the door and he rose to answer it. "Ah, she's back from the Potions lab already. She wanted you to know that she brought your supplies. I took the liberty of letting her into your office." He opened the door.

Earlier that day, he'd had to make a trip to Diagon Alley for fresh supplies. And it was only two weeks into the new term. Either the students were distracted by all the confusion around the increasingly draconian Educational Decrees, or they were just more dunderheaded than usual. He suspected a combination of both. In any event, they had been making an unusual number of destructive mistakes in his class, and he didn't have enough of many basic Potions ingredients to last until February.

He was accompanied on his errand by Tonks, disguised as a Ravenclaw student forced to accompany him as part of an elaborate detention. She cringed after him while he barked orders interspersed with remarks hinting at some especially dire Potions class catastrophe. Together with her usefulness at carrying items too magically volatile to be safely shrunk, it was not an altogether unpleasant outing.

And then he was Summoned, right in the middle of Diagon Alley. He was long practiced at hiding his reaction to the searing pain in his left arm, but a few passersby looked on in curiosity when he stopped in his tracks, his face losing whatever scarce colour it had.

He pulled Tonks into an alley, hastily put up a Concealing Charm, and handed her all of his packages. "Talk to the Headmaster, and whatever you do, don't try and get into my office. Since Barty Crouch broke in, I've been using goblin wards. I have no idea when I will return, should you need to be rescued." He handed her the communication mirror and regarded her for a moment, his expression unfathomable. "If I return." And he Disapparated.

Befuddled by alcohol and recent trauma, Snape was momentarily puzzled by the knock at his door.

"See for yourself, dear. He's fine." Tonks appeared from behind Dumbledore's tall form, her face returned to its natural state, assuming it had one, her cheeks still flushed from the cold, wearing jeans and a jumper.

She smiled gently at Snape. "How are you?" she asked.

Snape rose stiffly from his chair, trying not to wince. If there was anything he hated more than disrespect, it was sympathy. He never got any when he needed it, and now he saw it as no more than a ploy for people to satisfy their curiosity at the expense of other people's misfortunes.

He scowled down at her. "Were you able to bring all my purchases safely to the castle without dropping any of them?"

Dumbledore said evenly, "I'm sure no Shrivelfigs will spoil or go astray if you wait until tomorrow to check them."

Snape settled back into his chair and picked up his drink. "Then she has no reason to be here, far as I can see."

"I need to go shopping in London before the meeting this Saturday," she said brightly. "I thought, I'll tell you where we're going, and you can walk ahead of me while I'll 'tail' you in my Auror robes."

Snape sneered. "You understand that it is not the slightest bit plausible that I should ever walk into a woman's clothing store, or go anyplace else that is even remotely related to cosmetics or appearances?"

Tonks chuckled. "What a narrow view you have of women. First of all, you understand I don't need cosmetics, right?" She crinkled her nose, and one eye turned bright blue, the other dark brown. "Second of all, plenty of men are vain. Look at Gilderoy Lockhart."

Snape snorted. "A rather extreme example."

"Oh, I don't know about that. The most preening person I know is a man. My mum says that uncle Lucius spends more time on his hair than any witch we know. Apparently, cousin Draco is following in his footsteps as evil blonde sex god, junior."

He gestured impatiently. "Your propensity for pointless chatter continues unabated. Apparently, all those detentions were wasted on you. _Where_ are we going?" He glanced over at Dumbledore, who had been sitting in uncharacteristic silence for the past several minutes and was now rising to his feet. He was practically beaming at him, the damn twinkly-eyed old man.

Dumbledore said, "It's late, and I am very old. I'll tell the house-elves to have poached eggs ready for you in the morning. With some of that Canadian smoked salmon." He walked to the door and gave a little wave. "Good night."

There was a moment of awkward silence in the wake of Dumbledore's departure. Snape refilled his glass. "Erm...would you like a drink, Miss Tonks?"

"It's just Tonks. 'Miss Tonks' makes me feel like I'm back in the dungeons for Potions class." She grinned. "And I thought I could afford my own drinks."

He regarded her and smirked. "But you are back in the dungeons, aren't you?"

"Yes, but I've never been...that is to say..." she looked around and blushed. He continued to look at her, smirking.

She took out her wand and conjured a glass. "Yes, I will take that drink, Severus. Thank you. No, don't get up." She crossed the room and quickly poured, her face feeling hot under his scrutiny. In clumsy haste, she filled the glass almost to the brim.

"Really, Tonks. This isn't pumpkin juice," he hissed. "No, don't even think about pouring some back--you'll probably spill it all over."

She whirled on him, but a sharp retort died on her lips. Up close, the dark circles under his eyes seemed almost continuous with his sunken cheeks, which appeared cavernous. Though it was cool in the room, there was a sheen of sweat on his upper lip. The hand holding his glass was criss-crossed with tiny marks that looked like healed cuts and burns.

He continued, "I'm not in the habit of offering drinks to Aurors. And I don't offer such generous drinks to anybody." But with the disappearance of the after-effects of the Cruciatus curse, he found that he was too tired to be more than mildly snide, and she could tell. Damn her intrusive sympathy. "So where are we going tomorrow that justifies such a waste of what little free time I have?"

She retreated back to the other chair. "We're going to Knockturn Alley, to Ivy's Poison Plants, Seeds and Spores to buy venomous tentacula seeds. But what we're really doing is taking tiny samples of their Devil's Snare. All magical florists and plant nurseries in UK are being investigated. We're trying to find the one that supplied the Devil's Snare that killed Broderick Bode."

Despite his fatigue, Snape lifted his head and nodded slightly. "Maybe my order is ready," he mumbled.

"I'm sorry, what was that, Severus?"

He roused himself. "I said, we won't find it there. It's likely to have come from someone's private nursery. Narcissa Malfoy is an accomplished magical botanist and the Malfoys have extensive greenhouses, for instance."

"Yes, but try getting a warrant to search the Malfoys. So we're reduced to ruling out commercial suppliers."

"And as long as Fudge is in Malfoy's pocket..." He was very tired now. His eyes were starting to close.

Tonks gulped the rest of her drink and stood, wobbling slightly. "I'll just...go now. Good night, Severus." She stopped short of the door. "Erm...Severus? I need to un-ward the door. What's your password?"

Snape opened his eyes halfway and whispered with surprising forcefulness, "No way in hell."

She turned to face him, and folded her arms. "I'm guessing that's not your password. So...am I spending the night, then?" she said lightly. "That Canadian smoked salmon sounds good."

His eyes opened fully, and she could see the beginnings of a blush creep up from under his collar.

He didn't meet her eyes. "It's more than just a password. You have to make contact with...never mind. I'll take care of it." He stood, but after one step, he hissed in pain and dropped to his knees.

"Severus!" Tonks cried. "I'll get Poppy." Rushing to the fireplace, she extinguished the fire and grabbed a handful of Floo powder.

"NO!" he shouted, his voice somewhat muffled by his position on his hands and knees, greasy black hair hanging about his face.

Tonks paused, Floo powder trickling out from between her fingers. "Dumbledore, then?"

"Nobody. The Cruciatus curse is damaging my back. Poppy can do no more for me. Wake her up, and she'll just use that as an excuse to send me to that specialist at St. Mungo's." He struggled, and failed, to get to his feet. She helped him, and he painfully stood, clutching at her arms.

"Well, why don't you? See the specialist, I mean." He was awkward to hold upright, but surprisingly light for his height. "Should I set you back in that chair?"

"Not the chair, I won't be able to get up again. If I go to St. Mungo's, how do we explain why a teacher is getting hit repeatedly with an Unforgivable? Dumbledore thinks he can cover it up, but he's not as omnipotent as he likes to pretend." He looked into her eyes, and she noticed that his eyes were not really black, but a very dark brown, the pupil almost blending with the iris.

"Of course they're brown," he snapped weakly. "Can I count on your discretion?" He gestured at the nearest wall. "I require...some assistance." The last part he spoke almost inaudibly.

"Where...?" She looked over her shoulder at the wall towards which he had gestured. A door had appeared in the previously smooth, unseamed stone.

She helped him through the door. As they entered, a torch lit up in its sconce, revealing a sparsely-furnished bedroom. Besides the four-poster bed with a dark green coverlet there was a single bedside table heavily-laden with books. Many hundreds more books sat on the bookshelves lining the walls.

She half-carried him to the bed and set him down gently, and he turned his head away as he winced. He looked back at her, eyes half-closed, and smirked. "You were expecting skeletons manacled to the walls, no doubt. Instruments of torture dangling from the ceiling?"

She stifled a snicker. Torture him and ply him with liquor, and his capacity for snark remained unchanged. "No, Severus. I was just looking for the beam from which you hang by your feet when you sleep." She looked around bewilderment. "Where do you keep your nightshirts?" Where did he keep any of his clothes? There was no wardrobe, dresser, or so much as a hook on the back of the door.

He was gingerly lowering himself to the bed. "Only if you want to be hexed half-way to Belgium." His voice lacked any rancour, and his eyes were closing. He opened them halfway. "Your detention is over. You may leave."

Lying on his side on the bed, his robes draped over him, she could see how thin he was. Part of his arms and legs were exposed, the pale skin marked by dark bruises.

"I'm taking your shoes off," she announced. "What hex do you have for that?" And began to untie the laces. His muffled reply didn't sound like a very serious threat, and by the time she pulled the covers over him, he was fast asleep.

She tiptoed out of the bedroom and closed the door. It instantly became flush with the wall, its edges disappearing and merging with the surrounding grey stone. And then she remembered that she still didn't have the password to his wards. What with the Ministry watching the fireplaces, Dumbledore had asked that Order members not travel by Floo except in emergencies.

She re-ignited the fire before transfiguring the chair into a cot, and her robe into a blanket. Before drifting off to sleep, she wondered what would be worse: explaining to Dolores Umbridge why she was Flooing out of the Potions master's private quarters after midnight, or facing Snape in the morning when he came out of his bedroom to find her there.


	3. Chapter 3

Snape swept through Knockturn Alley, ignoring Tonks' panting pleas to slow down.

"You know where we're going," he retorted over his shoulder before picking up his pace. "And you're supposed to say behind me anyway."

The motley denizens of Knockturn Alley stepped out from the shadows when they heard the footsteps of the two approaching. They retreated just as quickly when they saw the tall, scowling wizard in black, though they whispered in curiosity at the sight of his companion. Over the years, the tall wizard in black had been occasionally followed by Aurors, but they were usually burly older men, seasoned veterans of the first war of the sort who used Unforgivables after they were permitted. Maybe even before.

The Ministry had never sent a pink-haired woman Auror in her twenties, looking like she was barely out of training, to trail Snape.

That morning, Tonks thought she awoke slightly after he did. She was fast asleep until a silky voice whispered, "I need my chair back," and she woke with a start to find him standing over her, his large nose about six inches from her face, black eyes peering at her intensely. She felt that moment of disorientation when one awakens in a strange place with a strange man, who was looking at her with a bemused expression. Why wasn't he angry?

"So this is your 'real' face," he said, and smirked.

She covered her face in horror. Whatever morph she assumed during the day would gradually reverse while she was sleeping, leaving her with the features she was born with by morning. Whenever she was not waking up alone, she would set a Chronos charm, waking her early and quietly, in order to leave enough time to change her face before the other person awoke.

No-one had seen her natural features in years. Including herself. Every morning since she was ten years old, she morphed before her feet touched the floor. None of her roommates or housemates at Hogwarts or since were ever the wiser.

She lowered her hands, revealing the familiar pale, heart-shaped face with dark, twinkling eyes. She ran her hands through her hair, now a short and spiky apple-green.

Snape frowned. "There are many who would envy your ability to avoid looking like a despised relative."

"I like this face," she protested, transfiguring the cot back into a chair and the blanket back into her robe, and silently cursing her carelessness. Of all the people to see her real face, it had to be someone who knew the person whose resemblance to her she so deplored.

Snape swept across the room a little stiffly and began unwarding the door. "After twelve years in Azkaban, she doesn't look much like you any more."

Feeling a little defensive, she walked up behind him and said, "Uncle Lucius says you fancy her."

The door opened. He turned to her, smirking slightly. "I once made the mistake of saying she was the prettiest of the Black sisters. Which doesn't make her any less the psychopathic bitch she has always been. 'Uncle' Lucius likes to try and embarrass me. He expects people who have less money than he does to be as groveling as a house elf in his presence. Especially if they are graceless enough to be smarter than he is." He then proceeded swiftly down the dungeon corridor, though his pace was mercifully slower than yesterday.

"How's your..."

He stopped and held up a hand. "Do not speak of it." He resumed his pace. "The Headmaster has invited you to breakfast at the High Table. You can have Hagrid's seat, as he's eating in his hut this morning. One of his creatures has a cold, or something. He came by the office this morning looking for sulphuric acid and an eye dropper to feed with."

So he had been up and about for a while before waking her.

"You're not angry about...my presence in..."

He stopped abruptly. Though there was unlikely to be anybody around in the dungeon corridor before breakfast, he erected a Silencing Charm. "If you'd Flooed out, I'd be spending breakfast being interrogated by the Hogwarts High Inquisitor. And if you'd tried breaking through my wards, you'd be spending breakfast in the hospital wing. Assuming we found you quickly enough. However..." He paused and looked at his feet. "You understand how I must avoid the appearance of...personal attachments. For your safety, we must avoid these sorts of circumstances in the future." He terminated the Silencing Charm and continued down the corridor, even faster this time.

As promised, she ate at the High Table, though she had to transfigure Hagrid's stool into a proper chair so that her chin wasn't resting on the table. Her biggest worry was that some of the Gryffindor students would do something stupid like wave to her, or call a greeting. But the Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione just looked momentarily surprised, and smiled. And their looks of surprise blended in with those of the rest of the student body, who started murmuring at the appearance of this green-haired woman who trailed Snape into the Great Hall, and obviously severely pissed him off somehow. True to form, he was either ignoring her, tearing into his breakfast as if he were venting his rage on his eggs in a gory splattering of yolk, or shooting her furious looks, his thin face twisted with rage. He might be over-doing it a little, she thought. Even a few of the Slytherins were giving her looks of sympathy.

As they had agreed, she left the table first, throwing down her cutlery and rushing from the Hall, blotchy-faced, her food half-eaten. She could hear some of the Slytherins sniggering in her wake, and suppressed a chuckle.

Even half a Hogwarts breakfast was far more food than she normally ate in the morning anyway, and she was soon regretting it after they met outside the castle gates and Apparated to London. Snape's breakfast seemed to have restored him completely, and Tonks was even feeling a bit queasy, almost having to run down Knockturn Alley in order to keep up with him as they entered Ivy's Poison Plants, Seeds, and Spores. She entered the shop slightly after Snape to keep up the appearance of following him and stayed behind the billows of his cloak, effectively masking her from the view of the person behind the counter.

The owner, Ivy Innis, was a plump, middle-aged witch dressed in bright, floral-patterned robes with glasses on a chain around her neck. She glanced up when she saw Snape enter and removed a plant from the counter, setting it down somewhere out of sight before removing dragonhide gloves and greeting the Potions master with a bright, false smile as he approached the counter.

"Professor Snape," she said ingratiatingly. "We are still waiting for the enchanted _Peganum Harmala _seeds. Our supplier attempted to blame Muggle security at the Syrian end." She laughed nervously. "I already expressed displeasure on your behalf. I told him what you said last year, about Muggle politics being no excuse for failures in the supply chain of magical..." Her smile slid off her face at the expression on his.

He was smiling in a friendly sort of way. "Why do you persist in presuming to know what I want?" he asked lazily.

Mrs Innis seemed familiar with this smile. She gulped. "I...I didn't mean..."

In a slightly bored tone, he continued, "How many times do I have to tell you not to speak for me in these tedious disputes you have with your various suppliers?"

She was worrying the chain holding her glasses. "My...apologies..."

"Instead of the supplies I require, you provide me with excuses and these elaborate explanations in which you have evoked my name to people I have never metI only came here today to add some _Datura stramonium _to my order. But maybe this simple request would be too complicated for you."

Flustered, she almost dropped her glasses and she fumbled to put them on, and retrieved a quill. "How...how much do you require?"

He leaned over the counter to peer down his long nose at her. He was considerably taller than her, and she shrank further under his scrutiny. "You mean...you don't already know?" he hissed. "But you presume to know so much, perhaps you fancy yourself a Seer. Perhaps I could presume to find better jimsonweed by the side of a motorway."

And he continued in a similar vein as Tonks wandered amongst the plants. She found some innocuous-looking Devil's Snare seedlings between the decorative poison sumac and some nasty-looking shrubbery with large fleshy blue leaves and two-inch-long thorns oozing what she hoped was red-coloured sap.

"Don't remember seeing those in the Hogwarts greenhouses," she remarked to herself as she set to work. She managed to Accio tiny cuttings from each Devil's Snare seedling without touching the thorn plants before Mrs Innis noticed her.

"May I help you?" called Mrs Innis, glancing at Tonks' Auror robes. Beside her, Snape was bent over, writing in an enormous book, his nose barely above the page.

"Yes," said Tonks, flashing her badge. "Auror Tonks from Magical Law Enforcement. When I purchase some venomous tentacula seeds from you, I need you to show me the whole procedure from start to finish."

"Yes, well..." Mrs Innis edged slightly away from Snape. "They're Category IV Restricted, so only a Potions master, an apothecary, or someone from Magical Law Enforcement can purchase them, and you've already shown me your identification. You just need to tell me how much, and I need you to sign...the register." She nodded in the direction of the large book and the Potions master writing in it.

Snape straightened, wincing almost imperceptibly, to find the two women looking at him. Glancing dismissively at Mrs Innis, he turned his attention to the young Auror. "Miss Tonks. Still striking terror into the hearts of dark wizards everywhere? Who are terrified you might trip on them, I daresay."

Tonks lifted her chin. "You would know more about the hearts of dark wizards than I, _Professor." _She emphasized the last word, sneering slightly.

Snape returned her sneer. "You certainly have a lot more courage when you have the authority of the Ministry behind you, _Auror_ Tonks. But unless you are here to arrest me, I must be off." And he flung a quill down on the register and stalked out, slamming the door without magic.

Tonks was left with the dilemma of following through on the charade and somehow catching up with Snape. She hastily made a purchase, signed the register, and left the shop as quickly as she could without running. Snape was barely half a block away, standing on the corner of Knockturn and Diagon Alley, reading the Daily Prophet while passersby gave him a wide berth.

"A _pound _of venomous tentacula seeds?" he snorted as she recounted the tale of her hasty purchase while he folded the paper. "That should do Hogwarts for the next thousand years. You do realize that as magical epiphytes, venomous tentaculas live virtually on air? And have the lifespan of large trees? I could talk to Beauxbatons and Durmstrang and see if they want to make a trade, but they'd probably laugh me off the continent." Despite his uncharacteristically mild and conversational tone, he was scowling fiercely at her as he spoke. She glared back, noticing with her peripheral vision the sympathetic glances of passersby. Pitying the poor Auror who got stuck questioning Snape, she thought, carefully hiding her amusement.

"I said, did you touch any of the Weeping Hyacinths?" he asked sharply. "Your marks in Potions would have been much higher if ever you learned to just pay attention."

"Did I touch the what? Oh, do you mean those hideous thorn plants? No, I was careful not to touch them. Seemed like a bad idea."

"Are you sure? There's still time to give you the antidote. Otherwise, I'll have to waste even more time with you today, taking you to St. Mungo's."

She shook her head emphatically. "Didn't go near them." They looked like something You-Know-Who would give to his Death Eaters for Christmas, she thought.

He was peering closely at her. "Indeed," he said, and she could have sworn that his fierce scowl briefly gave way to a flash of amusement. "If you start to experience blue fungoid growths on your extremities, don't pass it off as a morph gone awry."

"I'll keep that in mind." She lowered her voice to an undertone. "It's still about an hour until the meeting. Molly invited us to lunch..."

He rolled his eyes. "Don't be absurd," he hissed, his expression again entirely fierce. Taking a step away from her, he Disapparated.

Taking out her wand, she followed his example--if not his location. Where could he go? He didn't have time to return to Hogwarts. By the time he walked from the border of the anti-Apparation wards to the castle, he'd have to turn around and walk right back. Even at his pace.

She speculated out loud to Molly when she arrived at the kitchen of 12 Grimmauld Place. "Maybe he goes to Knockturn Alley and has lunch somewhere there. He seems at home there," she mused. Most wizards wouldn't admit to fear in Knockturn Alley, but they were at least wary. Snape's aplomb bordered on casual. He stalked down the alley with as much confidence as if it were a hallway in the Hogwarts dungeons.

"Let me help you with that, Molly." Together they began to set the table.

"He's probably tucking into a pint of AB negative as we speak," said Sirius, entering the kitchen closely followed by Remus.

"Sirius!" chastised Molly.

Remus smiled wanly at her. "How was it today?"

"It was fine. He's not so bad, really."

Sirius snorted.

"Really!" insisted Tonks. "He was a bit...terse, but otherwise completely professional. The operation took half the time it would have if I were alone. It was like working with another Auror."

"I doubt he would think much of that comparison," said Remus wryly.

"Never mind this morning!" exclaimed Sirius. "What about last night? I thought we were on for chess."

"Sirius, I'm sorry. It's just that...well...I sort of got trapped in Severus' rooms last night and..."

"You WHAT?" screamed Sirius. Remus chuckled. "This isn't funny, Moony." He turned back to Tonks. "Why didn't you Floo out?"

"Albus said, only in emergencies..."

"What would _you_ call getting trapped in Snape's rooms?"

"Really, Padfoot. What's the worst that could happen? She's a fully-trained Auror," said Remus, grinning.

"And he's a fully-trained Death Eater, on top of _being Snape._ At the very least, we should check her neck for puncture marks."

"Very amusing, Black," said a silky voice from the doorway. Snape entered with his usual soundless tread and set a Galleon on the kitchen counter. He tapped it with his wand, and the Galleon transformed and expanded to reveal a smoking cauldron.

"Thanks, again, Severus," said Remus. "Full moon tomorrow," he explained.

Sirius slid his chair away from the table, rose to his feet, and padded across the room to stand within a couple of feet from the Potions master, fixing him with a glare. "So, Snape..."

Snape interrupted, "I didn't bring anything for you. If you'd said something, I could have stopped at the Magical Menagerie for some Canine Crunchies."

With unusual grace for her, Tonks also stood and positioned herself close to Snape and Sirius. Sirius glared at her, and she just smiled and folded her arms.

Snape sneered at her. "That's not necessary," he hissed.

"I'm sure it isn't," she replied mildly, not budging.

Sirius turned back to Snape. "So, _Snivellus_. Tonks was just telling us that she got trapped in your rooms last night. Perfectly understandable. After all, it's the only way you can get women these days, isn't it? Now that you can't use Imperius anymore, that is."

Tonks and Remus both reached for their wands, but Snape merely smirked. "So women were throwing themselves at you in Azkaban, were they, Black? You seem to have a taste for cousins. Tell me, how was Bellatrix?"

"We have to stop this," implored Molly in a whisper to Tonks and Remus.

Tonks placed a finger to her lips and whispered back, "Albus says, let them go at each other as long as they're just talking."

Molly replied, "I wouldn't turn my back on them, if I were you."

Tonks smiled. "Albus said that, too."

"You would know more about Bellatrix than me," snarled Sirius.

Snape smirked more widely. "True," he conceded. "But I think she would have preferred you."

Sirius narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

Snape continued, "After all, I am not capable of sexual activity in the physical form of another species." He nodded to Tonks, Remus, and Molly. "I'll be in the library." And he left the kitchen.

Remus and Tonks restrained an enraged Sirius. "How dare he..." he sputtered. "How did a Death Eater get to walk free, while I..."

"Have a plate," said Molly. "I have had seven children taught by that man, and I can tell you, the more you let him get to you, the worse he'll get."

"She's right," said Remus, who had fetched a coffee mug and poured himself a mugful of potion. "When I worked with him, I ignored his taunts and eventually he got bored and left me more or less alone."

"Yes, Remus has the right idea. Always so polite and courteous. You set such a good example for the children."

Remus smiled. "Thank you, Molly. But to be fair here, I don't think Snape is going to just leave it alone if Sirius is polite to him."

Visibly much calmer, Sirius said, "Yes. The man holds grudges forever."

Tonks said, "Maybe that's because you expect him to."

Sirius shook his head. "I should think trying to get me kissed by a Dementor makes us even."

Molly lifted a large tray to the table. "Here's some bread and cheese and cold meat. I thought we'd make our own sandwiches today. That way, everybody get what they want. Whoops, I forgot the spreads."

"No you didn't, Molly; I've got them," said Remus. "Who wants butterbeer, besides me?"

"Does that mix with your potion?" asked Molly.

"I hope so," replied Remus. At her expression, he said, "Yes, it's fine."

"Are you sure you can't mix sugar with it?" asked Sirius. "I wouldn't take that bastard's word for it, if I were you." He assembled himself a thick sandwich, with multiple layers of cheese and meat and a third slice of bread in the middle. "Speaking of him, Tonks, it almost sounds like you're starting to get along with the git."

"I don't think all this name-calling helps matters," said Molly reprovingly.

"Ron Weasley would approve of that sandwich," said Remus, looking up from the slices of bread upon which he was spreading mayonnaise to admire Sirius' triple-decker sandwich. "And yes, sugar really does make Wolfsbane Potion worthless. I asked the Beauxbatons Potions mistress when Albus sent me to France to talk to her. She also said that butterbeer was fine, though French wines were better."

Tonks said, "If I'm working with him, I should try and get along with him. Whether or not he reciprocates is up to him. But on my part, it's only professional."

Sirius said, "As long as that's all it is." He lifted his sandwich and opened his mouth as if to take a bite, but instead set it back down again. "I may have overdone it. This bread is thick."

"Your Snuffles mouth could get around it," said Remus.

Sirius removed the slice of bread from the middle of the sandwich. "I always turned into a dog at mealtimes in Azkaban. The food there was inedible, but dogs can eat anything." He bit into his sandwich.

"The food is also punishment," said Tonks. "They give them this thin, slimy sort of gruel fortified with vitamins."

Sirius shuddered. "Don't remind me; it was like distilled essence of Dementer. I'll never be a dog at mealtimes again unless it's a matter of life or death." He took a large bite of his now-thinner sandwich.

"Considering how your dog form made Azkaban easier for you, and even helped you be the first to ever escape, it's as if you were the only Animagus ever incarcerated," Molly remarked.

"Yes, I'd always wondered about that lapse in security," said Tonks.

Sirius shook his head. "That lapse in security took many years to appear."

They all ate in silence for several minutes. Remus alternated sips of his potion with swigs of butterbeer.

Even eating the extra slice of bread he had removed from his sandwich, Sirius finished first. Butterbeer in hand, he leaned back in his chair. "So Moony, tell me about this Beauxbatons Potions mistress. What's she like?"

Remus drained the last of his potion, shuddering slightly. "Well, she apprenticed with...î

Sirius grinned. "I'm not asking about her professional qualifications, Moony."

Molly said, "She's about thirty years old. And she's single. And she can speak English."

Sirius grinned and said, "So...she's French, young, single, and she knows how to make Wolfsbane? Who cares if she can speak English?"

Remus held up his hands. "Look, I only talked to her because she might be joining the Order," he protested.

"In my experience, it's better if you don't have a language in common," continued Sirius. "Simplifies things."

"When do we get to meet her?" said Tonks.

Remus shrugged. "Albus has been talking to her since the Triwizard Tournament. She had fought hard to get Fleur included in the Beauxbatons delegation. There was a lot of opposition to Fleur, because she's part Veela. Some thought that a 'half-breed' was not an appropriate representative of Beauxbatons."

Molly said, "So when Fleur was selected by the Goblet of Fire, it was a validation of her beliefs." She looked up from her tea to find Tonks, Remus, and Sirius staring at her. "Didn't I mention this? We had her over for dinner at the Burrow a couple of weeks ago. She came from France with Fleur. A rather earnest and serious girl, and kind of shy."

"And she has to deal with Snape, the poor woman," muttered Sirius.

"How's that?" asked Tonks.

Molly answered, "The more valuable Potions ingredients are stocked by goblin wholesalers. They offer volume discounts, so traditionally, each year, the Hogwarts and Beauxbatons Potions teachers buy these ingredients together, and divide them up. She says she lets Snape do all the talking, because he's better at driving a hard bargain."

"I don't doubt it," said Remus.

Molly continued, "Bill asked her how she tolerates Snape. And she said, when he gets cranky, she just pretends she doesn't understand English. Drives him mad, she says."

"I don't think that would work for us, Padfoot," said Remus.

Sirius turned to Tonks. "What _did_ happen last night?"

"Not much," she said. "After he got Summoned..."

"He was Summoned?" gasped Molly.

"Yes. No matter how many times that happens, I'll never get used to it." Tonks shuddered. "So, he had bought a lot of Potions ingredients, and asked if I would take them back to Hogwarts. I did, and then waited around to see if he made it back."

"Was he hurt?" asked Molly.

Tonks sipped at her tea, giving herself a moment to think about what to reveal. "Not this time," she said. "When he returned, I went with Albus to Severus' rooms to tell him I had safely brought back all his purchases. It was very late at this point, and then Albus left, and Severus abruptly went off to bed, and I was stuck in his sitting room. I should mention, Albus had warned me, just because I'm an Auror, I shouldn't think I can get past Severus' wards. For the past few years, he's been using these wards originally developed by Gringotts goblins. Earlier I had asked Severus about them, and he said, go ahead and try. As an Auror, he said, surely I could tolerate twelve hours in the presence of a decomposing basilisk in a quasi-splinched state."

Molly shuddered and said, "You made a sensible decision."

"Maybe you could have Flooed to a different part of the castle," mused Sirius. "Surely it wouldn't have attracted as much attention as an external Floo."

Remus shook his head. "She would have had to answer to Dolores."

Tonks said, "Well, I had a great breakfast. They had this Canadian smoked salmon. With bagels and cream cheese."

"Doesn't sound like the traditional English breakfast they used to serve us," said Molly.

"No, thank Merlin."

"Wait a minute," said Sirius, frowning and turning back to Tonks. "Why would he go to bed without making sure you left first?"

Molly looked puzzled, but Remus was smiling slightly. "Padfoot, he was probably very tired after being Summoned. So he let his guard down a bit. She may be an Auror, but she's in the Order after all. Dumbledore trusts her, too."

"Still, considering how fiercely protective he is of his privacy, it is odd." said Molly. "That man won't even eat in front of other people. Even if they are in the Order."

"Erm..." Tonks was wracking her brains for an explanation that she would be willing to share, and couldn't find one, instead finding herself oddly protective of the Potions master's privacy.

They looked up as the kitchen door opened, and Snape swept in, his eyes narrowing at the sight of Sirius, who sneered slightly, and looked away. Snape retreated to the far side of the kitchen and conjured himself a wooden stool upon which to sit. He was followed closely by Dumbledore and other members of the Order, who spread throughout the kitchen, conjuring chairs as needed.


	4. Chapter 4

A few weeks after the last Order meeting, Snape contacted Tonks late one Friday night. She was at a pub with some other Aurors when the communication mirror sent its signal, silent to all but her.

It was almost time to wrap up anyway, she thought as she made her way to the women's toilet. The by now very drunken group of Aurors, none of whom were in the Order besides her, had started drinking in London, where even the magical pubs close at eleven, and had Apparated to Edinburgh, where they could drink until four, when Snape called.

Tonks entered a stall in the women's toilet and cast a Silencing Charm about herself before removing the mirror from her handbag. "Wotcher, Severus," she said hoarsely.

"Meeting tomorrow morning at seven, " he said curtly. Smirking slightly, he added, "Don't be late."

Seven o'clock in the morning on a Saturday? It was an emergency meeting, then. She nodded blearily. "I'd wager you make a wicked Hangover Potion."

He peered at her through the mirror and smirked. "Do you become _less_ clumsy when you drink?"

"It's called a day off, Severus," she slurred, wishing her alcohol-soaked brain could come up with a snappier retort.

"Twelve Death Eaters escape Azkaban, and Aurors are scattered about the continent getting drunk. No wonder we almost lost the last war," he snapped before disappearing from the mirror.

The mirror had gone dark and was returning to its usual shiny reflective appearance before Tonks could reply.

When she arrived home, she set her Chronos Charm to just shy of glass-shattering intensity, and its shrieking in the morning made her skull feel as if it would split in two. A large glass of pumpkin juice and two cups of coffee later, she felt less like one of Hagrid's illegal breeding experiments and more like something approaching human, and Apparated to 12 Grimmauld Place. But the crack of her departure and arrival set off fresh waves of pain in her head. And the pumpkin juice definitely wasn't sitting well.

Snape had arrived right before she did and was hanging up his travelling cloak when she opened the front door. Seeing him, Tonks straightened her back and strode firmly into the front hallway, avoiding the troll leg umbrella stand, affecting her usual cheerful insouciance, as if she didn't feel like she had been pickled in preparation for vivisection. She greeted Snape with a casual, "Wotcher, Severus," as she hung up her coat. He smelled a bit of stale drink himself, and she swallowed desperately when her face was out of sight.

"You're looking a bit peaky, " he observed snidely. "Or is the face supposed to match the hair today?"

"Right on both counts, " she replied breezily. "And I'm flattered you noticed." She pushed past him to enter the kitchen when there was a light tap on her shoulder, and she looked back at Snape in surprise.

He looked away, and then he reached into a pocket. "I don't know why I'm doing this, since I never sit anywhere near you. However, it would be inappropriate if you started vomiting in the middle of the meeting." He retrieved a Knut and tapped it with his wand.

Nothing happened.

He frowned and peered closely at the coin before reaching into his pocket and retrieving another coin while Tonks giggled. "You're terribly nearsighted, aren't you? Have you thought about getting glasses?"

He paused in the middle of tapping his wand on the second coin and irritably shook his head. "Glasses would interfere with the Occlumency. And I would see other people more clearly."

"You would also see yourself more clearly, " she said, watching the coin transform into a glass of all-too-familiar green liquid, which she accepted gratefully.

He snorted. "Yes, seeing myself more clearly is surely a worthy goal. Drink up, before I change my mind."

She sipped cautiously at first, just to be on the safe side. Most potions were unavoidably disgusting, given their ingredients and the perverse reluctance of certain Potions masters to bother with such trivialities as palatability. But potions intended for queasy people needed to be palatable. Hangover Potion tasted like water at first, with hints of citrus and coffee as one continued to drink. "This is the really expensive stuff, Severus." She closed her eyes, savouring the sense of well-being spreading to her head and limbs. Her headache disappeared and was replaced by a mental clarity she didn't normally enjoy this early in the morning. As she drained the glass, her abnormal awareness of her stomach disappeared.

He was watching her standing there with her eyes closed, licking the last of the potion from her lips. "It's not expensive when you make it yourself. The ingredients are commonplace, but apothecaries charge an exorbitant mark-up on it."

"Really? Why's that?" she said, opening her eyes and cradling the glass in her hands. She now felt better than she did most mornings.

"Because they can," he answered, plucking the now-empty glass from her fingers. "Let's get rid of that, before you smash it and wake up the portraits. We'll attract enough attention, being as late as we are. And I would appreciate it if you kept this private. Your cousin's monthly accusations of my poisoning the werewolf are tedious enough."

He vanished the glass and swept into the kitchen, Tonks close behind.

"The Ministry really thinks our children are safer with you _gone_ from the school? Are they really that blind?" Arthur Weasley was saying with uncharacteristic vehemence.

Minerva McGonagall smiled enigmatically. "I wouldn't say Albus is _gone _from the school, exactly. He just isn't keeping office hours."

Albus Dumbledore chuckled. "Rest assured, Arthur, the safety of Hogwarts students remains my primary obligation. And now that I am liberated from the day-to-day minutiae of running the school, I have more time to pursue other concerns."

Snape said, "And who would make a better ambassador for Ministry stupidity than Dolores Umbridge?"

"Precisely," said Dumbledore, nodding at Snape. "The Head of Hogwarts has always been under a spotlight. If Dolores continues to behave as she has done, she will discredit herself, and by proxy, the Ministry, in a highly public way."

Emmeline Vance protested, "But to have _that woman_ running the school? Do you know she advocates torture? When she was Senior Undersecretary to Bartemius Crouch in his days as head of Magical Law Enforcement, she single-handedly brought in the use of Unforgivables against Death Eaters."

Minerva McGonagall said mildly, "I don't recall you raising any objections at the time, Emmeline."

"Well, I was distraught, wasn't I? Grief-stricken, and all that. Dolores is skilled at exploiting emotionally-unbalanced people for her own ends. And don't you think she could use the Headmistress position as a pulpit from which to preach the Ministry position?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "Dolores is an effective manipulator behind the scenes, but in positions of leadership, she fails because she lacks the diplomatic skills these sorts of positions require."

"And her amphibian mien doesn't help," added Snape.

"Maybe, to be on the safe side, we could find something to blackmail her with," said Mad-Eye Moody. "For instance, maybe she's another unregistered Animagus."

Sirius chuckled and said, "How many more of those can there be?"

Moody fixed both his magical and real eyes on Sirius. "You tell me, my friend. They seem to be everywhere. You said Animagi take on some of the features of their animal when in human form. Does this mean Dolores can turn into a toad?"

Everyone laughed except Snape, who sniffed and said, "That would be redundant."

There was renewed laughter, except from Sirius, who glowered at Snape, and Snape, who glowered at everybody, and Minerva McGonagall, who shot a sharp look at Snape.

"I'm sure everyone could use a good laugh at the expense of Animagi everywhere, " said McGonagall sternly, and the laughter abruptly stopped. The kitchen was now as respectfully silent as a Transfiguration class. "But for the sake of keeping this meeting _on track, _I would like to say for the record that we shouldn't use blackmail except as a last resort. Our side should be above such tactics."

"We should be above no tactics," countered Snape. "Just some we use less readily than others."

"Literally above no tactics, Severus?" retorted McGonagall. "But you were the most vocal critic of Aurors using Unforgivables during the last war. Not that I disagreed with you, of course..."

"Unforgivables aren't tactics," he hissed. "They're war crimes."

"Not if they're used against war criminals," spat Moody.

"Are you implying something?" Snape said, standing.

Moody twisted around in his chair, both his natural and magical eyes fixed on Snape. "I don't think I need to _imply_ anything, do you?" he retorted.

"That will do, Severus, Alastor," said Dumbledore, mildly reproving.

"We're getting ahead of ourselves here," protested Emmeline.

Sirius said, frowning, "Dolores likes to torture?"

"She's a sadist," verified Emmeline.

Sirius leaned forwards in his seat, resting his hands on his knees. "Is it possible she would use her position to torture students?" He regarded the teachers with the penetrating sort of gaze normally associated with the Potions master. "Is it possible she already has done?"

"Surely not!" gasped Molly. "Torturing Death Eaters is one thing...however reprehensible," she shot an uneasy glance at Snape. "But the Ministry wouldn't condone the torture of students for bad behaviour in class...would they?"

Snape, Dumbledore, and McGonagall looked at each other. Snape opened his mouth to speak when Dumbledore tapped him on the shoulder and shot him a look of warning. Snape scowled in return and leaned back in his chair, folding his arms.

Dumbledore said, "We can only respond if there has been a complaint. She has given detention to a number of students, and no-one has come forward with allegations of abusive behaviour."

Sirius said, "She has given detentions to Harry. If I find out that she's been doing something to him..."

Snape said, "If you turn up in her office, I'm sure she'll consider it the crowning achievement of an already successful school year."

Sirius twisted in his chair to glare at Snape. "What is she doing to him?" he hissed.

Snape smirked. "Nothing he doesn't deserve, I daresay."

"Severus!" gasped McGonagall, horrified. Dumbledore touched her shoulder and shook his head slightly. She sat back in her chair, her lips pressed together into the thinnest of lines.

Sirius' gaze alternated between the three Hogwarts staff, his eyes showing a glimmer of that mad gleam so prominent in his "Wanted" posters. "What are you hiding?" he hissed.

McGonagall said placatingly, "Harry's biggest complaint this year is that he's no longer allowed to play Quidditch."

Moody growled, "Snape's having you on, Sirius."

Sirius continued to glare at them. "He'd better be."

Molly said, "Sirius, listen. Fred and George haven't complained. Not that teenage boys tell their mother much of anything, but they have received more detentions than the rest of my children put together," she paused to sigh and shake her head dolefully before continuing. "And if that woman committed acts of brutality upon them, I'm sure they'd say something."

Sirius said sadly, "Harry hides things from me. I know he does."

Snape said in his penetrating whisper, "So Potter's not entirely lacking in..."

Dumbledore interrupted, "Severus and Tonks, meet me in the drawing room. And I want to thank you all for coming at such short notice, and remind you again that _I am available_ if needed."

Nearly everyone vanished the extra chairs and left the kitchen, spilling into the hallway in a throng. Dumbledore, Snape and Tonks mingled with the crowd before slipping through a doorway off the front hallway. They found themselves in a room that appeared to have been lavish once, decorated with ornate, if badly-faded tapestries hanging on chipped dark wood-paneled walls. The room was crowded with dusty, threadbare antique chairs scattered about in a haphazard way. Snape and Tonks looked about themselves awkwardly, trying to figure out whether to stand or sit, and where.

"Please sit, both of you." Dumbledore gestured, and the chairs flew to the walls except three, which came together into a circle around a small, battered occasional table, varnish peeling from its ornately-carved, chipped legs. Dumbledore flicked his hand, and the dust levitated off the chairs and table and vanished.

"Molly and Sirius could sure use your help around here," commented Tonks as she settled into a newly-clean chair.

Dumbledore smiled at Tonks. "I've been thinking of sending the two freed house-elves over here to lend a hand. But Winky is rather fragile, and Dobby and Kreacher would likely come to blows." He reached into a pocket and retrieved an oblong slab wrapped in tin foil and bent the slab back and forth, breaking it in several places before gesturing to unwrap the foil. "You both hate my lemon drops, don't you?" he said wryly.

"They're not my favourite thing," admitted Tonks sheepishly.

"They're more effective than a Silencing Charm for gluing one's jaws together," added Snape.

Dumbledore nodded. "Considering how much both of you like chocolate, I thought I couldn't go wrong with a bar of Honeydukes' Bittersweet."

Tonks happily accepted a piece of chocolate. "That'll keep the Dementors at bay," she said, then turned to Snape with some surprise. "You _like_ chocolate, Severus?"

Snape was leaning back in his chair, arms folded. "It's not like I hate everything," he said somewhat petulantly. "But I'm not hungry."

"I'm not hungry either, but this is chocolate, not dinner," said Tonks cheerfully.

"I insist," said Dumbledore, eyes twinkling.

Snape sighed. "Very well," he said, and took a tiny piece.

They ate in silence for a moment, and then Dumbledore said, "I'm worried about Harry."

"Justifiably," said Snape, taking a larger piece of chocolate.

"Why?" asked Tonks.

"Occlumency lessons are not going well," said Dumbledore.

"The word I used was 'abominably,' I believe," said Snape.

Dumbledore sighed. "Harry's not a bad student. He's a typical teenage boy in many ways. But if he were half as diligent as his friend Hermione, we may not have had this problem."

Tonks looked thoughtful. "Are you sure it's just a matter of motivating him to study harder? His conduit into You-Know-Who saved Arthur's life. Surely that would make anybody conflicted," she said.

"Yes, but we've impressed upon him the importance of closing this conduit," said Dumbledore.

"Have we?" said Snape, his voice a bit muffled from all the chocolate in his mouth. "Surely knowledge of the Prophecy would provide better motivation, even for a teenager as defiantly average as Potter."

"He's not ready to hear about the Prophecy," argued Dumbledore a bit wearily.

"You mean, you're not ready to tell him," countered Snape. "He's not a child anymore, Albus--he's a sullen teenager seething with resentment over being kept in the dark. As far as he's concerned, you expect him to work hard at extra lessons with his most hated teacher just because you think it's a good idea."

Dumbledore smiled a bit sadly. "I think he hates Dolores more than you, Severus."

"I couldn't be more indiff..."

Dumbledore interjected, "You understand he would have stopped being a child much sooner if we'd told him when you thought we should."

Snape shrugged. "Children often grow up in circumstances that force them to assume larger burdens than they should, usually for no better reason than they picked bad parents."

"You have made your opinions clear on this matter, Severus," said Dumbledore, a note of steel in his voice. "I did not bring you here to re-visit this argument." He turned to Tonks. "I would like to have you at Hogwarts to keep a close watch on Harry. His friends have performed admirably in the past, but I don't want to rely upon students to tell us if something drastic happens."

"Like if Potter becomes possessed by the Dark Lord because he doesn't see any point to learning Occlumency..."

"That will do, Severus." Dumbledore's tone was sharper this time.

Tonks said, "You already have four Order members at the school. Does this mean you want me to pose as someone who can get closer to Harry? Like another student, perhaps?"

Dumbledore smiled. "You always had a highly logical mind, and I recall it served you well in many of your classes. Like Potions, if I remember your OWL results correctly." He looked towards Snape, who scowled in reply. "Severus, you have been working very hard. Maybe you require an assistant."

Snape's eyes widened in alarm. "You wouldn't dare."

Tonks said indignantly, "How can I keep an eye on Harry outside of Potions classes, if I'm in the dungeons all the time?"

Dumbledore raised both his hands. "Forgive me my little joke. Tonks, you will stay in Gryffindor tower with other students. You will have been privately sorted into Gryffindor, after having transferred from Beauxbatons in your final year."

Tonks frowned. "Wait a minute...how could I have been sorted if the hat is locked in your office?"

"I have only just left Hogwarts. Your sorting has already happened. Getting back to your cover story, if I remember correctly, Andromeda did not repudiate all Black family traditions, and saw that you learned French."

Tonks nodded. "Yes, well, mum may have rejected the 'Toujours pur,' and all that, but she believes that learning other languages develops cognitive skills in children. But I'm not sure how well this will work, unless there are no Hogwarts students who are really French. Fleur tells me I have an abominable English accent."

Snape, who had relaxed slightly upon realizing that Dumbledore wasn't moving Tonks into the dungeons, answered, "You're English, and your family moved to France to follow a business opportunity, and moved back after the business failed. We can invent more backstory for you if needed."

Tonks broke into a grin. "This is a fun idea, but how am I going to work as an Auror at the same time that I am going to school and living at Hogwarts?"

Dumbledore reached into a pocket and removed a small device on a chain. Snape made a disgusted sound and looked away.

"You shouldn't need to use this Time-Turner very often," said Dumbledore. "Considering how much you're away from the office, working undercover, anyway."

"It's the same Time-Turner that liberated your cousin," spat Snape.

Tonks accepted the Time-Turner with delight. "I thought they tightened security around these."

"They certainly should have," muttered Snape.

"They did," said Dumbledore, eyes twinkling. "Just as they tightened security around me."

Tonks carefully placed the Time-Turner in her handbag. "Have you thought up a name for me?"

"I have," said Snape smoothly. "You are Dora Black."

"Dora Black. Right," she said, keeping her voice neutral.

With a look of concern, Dumbledore said, "You don't have to be, my dear. You can have an identity of your own devising."

She shook her head. "I was interrogated about being a Black before they would even let me into the training. Like I said then, it doesn't matter where I come from; only who I am."

Dumbledore nodded. "Yes, and what choices you make."

A bit peevishly, Snape said, "What she doesn't need is an unnecessarily complicated identity, and nearly telling the truth is the most convincing sort of lie."

Tonks said to Dumbledore, "Severus is right. The stakes are too high for you to worry about hurting my feelings. Dora Black it is."

"Indeed," said Snape, nodding approvingly. "When we go back to the school, you will be your Auror self at first. That way, if we run into Dolores Umbridge, you can explain that you were investigating my background as ordered, and you will follow me to the dungeons. If we don't encounter Umbridge, we will proceed to Minerva McGonagall's office, where she will provide you with robes and your location in Gryffindor tower. And you will morph into your schoolgirl appearance." He regarded her sharply. "A younger version of your current face won't work. You would be recognized by some current Gryffindor students, among others." He ran a finger thoughtfully over his lips. "A face that comes _naturally_ to you would be appropriate."

"No," she replied quickly. "I can morph into a different face from this and maintain it."

He smiled thinly. "You don't always remember to change in the morning."

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows but said nothing, instead diplomatically helping himself to another piece of chocolate.

"That was unusual circumstances," she snapped. "I was off-duty. And if I remember correctly, they don't serve firewhisky in Gryffindor tower. They're not Slytherins, see?"

"I've cracked down on the firewhisky-smuggling in the dungeons since you were a student," he retorted defensively. "And isn't it true that Metamorphagi are less clumsy if they assume their natural forms? The less attention you draw to yourself, the better. If your clumsiness forces me to give you more detentions than, say, the Weasley twins, people will take notice."

"Yes, well, between being older, and having _successfully_ completed Auror training, maybe I'll manage not to blow up so many cauldrons this time," she retorted.

"It's not as if your natural face is unattractive," he said.

Dumbledore and Tonks both looked at him, speechless.

"That is to say," he continued smoothly, though a blush was beginning to creep up from under his collar, "I doubt anybody at Hogwarts will remember who you look like, besides me. Nobody still at Hogwarts knew Bella as well as me. It's been nearly twenty years."

"But her photo has been on the front page of the Daily Prophet."

Dumbledore looked at his timepiece. "I really must be going," he said. "I have more than a few time zones to cross before nightfall. The magical mangroves ward themselves after dark, and it's a bit of a bother to break through them when you're a tired old man. I'll leave you two to work out the details."

"You can break through _mangrove_ wards?" gasped Tonks.

Dumbledore replied modestly, "You merely avoid insulting them with excessive flattery. They see right through artifice and mendacity and become just as impenetrable as if they were threatened with curses. Good night, then." He silently Disapparated, leaving Tonks and Snape facing each other in the drawing room.

Tonks took the last piece of chocolate. Feeling Snape's eyes on her, she broke the chocolate in half and offered a piece to him. As she looked up, he looked away, waving her off with an irritated gesture.

"Mangroves," she murmured, popping both pieces of chocolate into her mouth. Her voice a bit muffled, she added, "Wherever he is, it's got better weather than here."

Snape snorted. "Almost every place in the world does, between Reykjavik and Tierra del Fuego." He stood. "I imagine you need to pack. Meet me back here in an hour?"

"Why don't you follow me back to my flat?" said Tonks. "It would be much faster."

He lifted his cup to take another sip, but it was empty, and he set it down and stared at a stain on the carpet. "That is rash," he said softly. "I can't follow you back to your flat."

"Why not?" she replied. "You're the one who's always on about how you're the busiest in the Order, and why doesn't Dumbledore give more tasks to the unemployed members instead of to you and so forth. We go to my flat, I pack, and then we can go straight to the school from there."

He lifted his eyes to meet her gaze, and nodded. "Very well," he conceded, setting down his cup and standing. He followed her as she Disapparated.


	5. Chapter 5

ìAnonymous Reviewsî now enabled for the convenience of shy reviewers.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

They arrived outside a block of shabby, soot-covered buildings somewhere in the heart of Muggle London. The street was teeming with Muggles, and he was secretly relieved. He could sneer authentically at them, delaying the moment when he would be alone with this witch, who was making him increasingly uncomfortable.

"How can you stand to be in the midst of so many of them?" he muttered.

"That's half my heritage you're insulting," she replied.

_Half my heritage too, _he didnít say.

"Besides, I'm close to the Earls Court tube station. You know, the Underground."

ìI know what the Underground is,î he snapped. ìWhat I don't understand is why any witch or wizard in their right mind would travel that way." He shuddered at the thought. Of all the loathsome acts he had been forced to perform over the years, at least nobody had made him travel under the streets, furtive as vermin.

"It's no more underground than your dungeon," she argued, fumbling in her handbag for what he presumed were keys. In this part of town, she couldn't even use magic to enter her own dwelling. What a ridiculous waste of time for someone with Auror training.

"A dungeon is private and quiet," he countered. "And you don't have to dress in flimsy Muggle clothes." His Warming Charm was wearing off, and he couldn't re-cast it in front of all these Muggles. A gust of icy wind swept down the street and he struggled not to shiver. "It always struck me that women's handbags are nothing more than an exercise in losing personal belongings you actually have with you."

She opened the door. "You first. You're freezing."

He glared at her but didn't argue, and entered a narrow hallway redolent of boiled cabbage, its walls interrupted by featureless chipped doors, ending at a staircase. He looked up at the ceiling fixture, which was buzzing and flickering, making their shadows look weirdly intermittent.

"Don't they pay Aurors better than this?"

"Nobody who works at the Ministry is paid well enough to afford a nice apartment in London, except maybe the ones taking bribes from Uncle Lucius. This way; I'm on the second floor." She gestured for him to follow.

The light in the upstairs hallway was burnt out completely. Between the darkness and the privacy, Tonks was able to use an Unlocking Charm on the door to her flat.

It consisted of two tiny rooms that were cleaner and tidier than he expected. The larger room was furnished with nothing but a couch that looked old and battered enough to have been stolen from 12 Grimmauld Place, sitting opposite an area he guessed was a rudimentary sort of kitchen, consisting of a few sagging cupboards and a tiny countertop holding a kettle and a microwave. He looked towards the bedroom, where Tonks was packing in a flurry of flying clothes, books, and odd, Muggleish-looking sorts of personal items. He had no intention of going anywhere near the bedroom, but from what he could see, it was barely wider than its door.

"What are you doing?" he snapped. "We're supplying you with clothing, as well as food and shelter. You'll want for nothing."

Her green-haired head peered out the bedroom door. "There's equipment I must bring when I'm on assignment. You could make yourself some tea while you're waiting."

"Isn't your training all the equipment you need? And I've had enough tea for today, thanks," he replied. One could hardly spend more than five minutes with the Headmaster without drinking far too much tea. Speaking of which...he looked around. "Erm...where's the toilet?"

She directed him out of the flat and down the hall to the bathroom she shared with the other second-floor tenants. After using the toilet and washing his hands, he stood in front of the bathroom mirror frowning at his reflection. Muggle clothing made him even uglier than usual, he thought, though the clothing he wore today was innocuous enough: a black denim shirt, black jeans, and a black leather jacket. Everything was too close-fitting, making him look skinnier and his nose bigger by comparison. And those terrible fluorescent lights Muggles used everywhere made his sallow complexion look as green as Tonks' hair. He briefly wondered if his rejection of the Muggle side of his heritage was largely aesthetic.

"Severus? Are you alright?" he heard faintly through the bathroom door.

"You'd better be ready by now," he snapped, sending the bathroom door flying open and stalking down the hallway back to Tonks' flat. But he felt curiously exposed without his swirling black robes, and even looked surreptitiously down to make sure he'd remembered to zip up once Tonks had turned her back.

Tonks had levitated her trunk to the middle of the main room and was contemplating the problem of successfully transporting it back to Hogwarts.

"It's rather heavy," she said. "Maybe we could levitate it, and quickly grab the handles on either end as we Disapparate. Alternately, we could both kneel down beside it..."

"How absurd!" he interrupted, taking out his wand. "You've been spending too much time amongst Muggles. I'll shrink it for you, and you can put it in your handbag."

"No, no!" she said quickly, stepping between Snape and the trunk, hands raised. "I've got a lot of equipment in there that's too magically volatile to be shrunk. Like the Time-Turner, for instance? And then there are the larger items that I shrank in the first place to put into the trunk and if we shrink them further, they'll..."

"I know, I know, they'll disappear altogether." He looked down at the trunk contemplatively. "Just how heavy can the possessions of a Metamorphagus be?" He bent down and grasped one of the handles in order to lift one end of the trunk.

He managed to get it about two inches off the floor when pain slammed into his back as suddenly and severely as if Macnair had struck him with an axe. All strength left his body and he dropped the trunk and sagged to the floor as if all his bones had been removed.

"Severus!" Tonks cried, leaping to catch and lower his body to the floor. "You stupid, stubborn man! _Why_ did you have to try and lift it?"

He wanted to chastise her for calling him stupid and ask her why she had packed what felt like gold ingots from the Black family vault, but all he could manage was a weak, "Ow!"

"Severus." Her voice was very near.

His eyes, squeezed shut with pain, opened. Tonks was on her hands and knees, her face looming close to his.

"I can understand why St. Mungo's is out of the question," she said. "Definitely, the Healers would recognize damage from the Cruciatus Curse. But I think we should Floo to the hospital wing at the school. Do you agree?"

"No," he said, his voice stronger. "The Ministry is watching the fires." Despite the pain, he couldn't help glancing around the flat thinking, where was the Floo connection in a fireplace-less Muggle flat?

"No?" she said, not sounding surprised. "You don't want the Ministry to know you have a bad back?"

"I don't want the Ministry to know _why_ I have a bad back. Dolores Umbridge may be practically a Squib, but she's a clever, meddlesome woman. She's been down in the dungeons several times already since becoming Headmistress, asking how I make this or that potion, and in what quantities. Says Potions are her _hobby."_ From his position on the floor he managed a derisive snort.

Rocking back on her heels, Tonks took out her wand. Grinning, she said, "Maybe she fancies you."

He winced. "I'm in enough pain already." He looked warily at her wand. "What are you doing?"

"I was there the last time you hurt your back, remember? A good night's sleep straightens it out, at least temporarily. Don't get the wrong idea, but I'm moving you to my bed. I'll sleep on the couch. And we'll go back to the school in the morning." She stood in preparation for levitating him, and paused. "Should we inform Albus of the change in plans?"

He shook his head slightly and sighed in frustration. "He'll know we're fine. You should contact Minerva, though, and tell her we've been unavoidably detained in London until tomorrow."

After speaking to Minerva McGonagall, who gave her the oddest look before signing off, she levitated Snape to her bed. He kept his face turned away, but she could see the jaw muscles clenched on one side of his thin face and thought of taking him to St. Mungo's anyway, hang the consequences.

"This will take the pressure off your back," she said, tucking a pillow under his knees. "I have some paracetamol tablets with codeine. Unfortunately, my ex-flatmate took all the pethidine tablets with him but these are decent enough pain-killers."

"Flatmate?" he asked, wondering where a second person would sleep in this tiny place before realizing that the answer was right in front of him. Or underneath him, as it were, in the form of a double bed. They must have shrunk it to get it through the door, he thought.

She smiled wryly. "He was a Muggleborn, and liked his Muggle remedies a little too much, I think; he'd have come back for the rest of his tablets if he weren't afraid of being hexed."

"You would offer a Potions master a _Muggle_ pain remedy?" he said, sounding more weakly outraged than he intended.

She crawled onto the bed beside him and offered him the tablets along with a glass of water, for which she had conjured a bending straw. "I'd offer you a Pain-relieving Potion, but I don't have any, and you didn't bring your Potions kit with you."

Good point, he thought. He really was in an excruciating amount of pain and wouldn't be able to get the restorative sleep so necessary for his back without help. Assuming a reluctant, balking expression, he accepted the tablets. At least they were bitter on the tongue like a good potion and were difficult to swallow even with a lot of water. After about twenty minutes, the pain started to recede from the forefront of his consciousness and his back muscles began to relax. At least there was a bed to sleep in, he thought philosophically. He was no stranger to unexpected circumstances and had spent more than one night in fields, hidden amongst the heather, waking before dawn drenched in dew, shivering, his throat as raw as a steak. Sleeping in an Auror's bed deep in the heart of Muggle London wasn't his first choice, but he was warm and dry and at least nominally safe, and he allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

On the couch, Tonks was not so lucky. Her ex-boyfriend had taken all the furniture when he left, except the bed, which was hers. Sirius was planning on replacing everything in his house once his name was cleared and was only too glad to give her the couch. He and Molly had managed to get all of the dark magic out of it before they gave it to Tonks, but it stubbornly refused to be transfigured, insisting on remaining a lumpy couch that was too short for even a petite Metamorphagus to stretch out on. And no matter how many times it was scourgified, it still smelled of Doxy droppings and stale butterbeer.

She tried shortening herself, but body length changes were difficult morphs to maintain and reverted quickly after she fell asleep. She awoke for about the twelfth time to find her lengthening legs pushing her head up against the smelly armrest, kinking her neck painfully. "Lumochronos!" she whispered, and her wall clock's face lit up. She'd gotten no more than a few minutes' sleep, and it was shortly after four in the morning. There was no other furniture to transfigure, and conjuring a comfortable bed was a lot harder than it looked, especially when the witch attempting it was exhausted. She'd only slept about three hours the previous night, and that was more of a drunken stupor than a proper rest. And tomorrow (actually today), she was becoming a major part of the improved security around Harry Potter. It could be the most important assignment of her career and she would be starting it completely knackered. She looked towards the bedroom. How bloody likely was it that Snape would let her sleep in?

She sat up. "Sod it!" she said aloud, and stumbled into her bedroom.

The Potions master was still in the position she had left him. On his back, the pillow still tucked under his knees, he was deep in a codeine-enhanced slumber. He didn't so much as twitch when Tonks crawled in beside him.

When Snape opened his eyes, he blinked in bewilderment for a moment at the sight of a low, cracked plaster ceiling, so unlike the stone ceiling of his dungeon. The light streaming in through the small window told him it was between seven and eight o-clock in the morning, and as he became fully awake, he recalled the events of the night before. Those tablets had helped him sleep longer and more dreamlessly than he had in years. Nobody needed to know that, of course, but if he could just recall where she'd gotten the tablets, she probably wouldn't miss one, and he could analyze it and maybe duplicate its effects in a potion.

But he couldn't just go leaping out of bed. Laying motionless didn't hurt his back, so he tried flexing his shoulders against the mattress. Nope; still no pain. From bitter experience, he knew he had no choice but to get up gradually this morning, gently stretching for a bit, then easing into a vertical sitting position, legs dangling over the edge of the bed for a while before daring to stand.

He recalled Tonks' words of the night before and scowled. Yes, he was stupid to try and lift that trunk but that didn't give her the right to say so. And taking into consideration her drinking binge of the night before last, she was probably still asleep. Nothing like scaring a person into consciousness to put the right flavour on a day.

But first he needed to get up. He began to sweep his arms sideways in order to reach up and stretch his back lengthwise, when his hand touched...who's that? Instantly his wand flew into his right hand as he jerked his head sideways to see who was in bed with him.

The amount of glossy black hair heaped about the woman's head suggested that it would be extremely long when she stood. Her face was turned slightly away from him, and he regarded it in profile. She was an elegant-looking woman, though her features were too exaggerated for real beauty. And she was a bit spotty, as young women sometimes were. Still, she looked like the sort of pureblood she was not. The resemblance to her aunt Bella provided a convenient excuse for her to morph into an appearance that went better with the combat boots and those ridiculous American-style T-shirts. He filed this observation away for possible future use.

As if she became aware that she was being scrutinised, she opened her eyes. He rolled away from her, intending to slip out of the bed and lower himself to the floor to continue his back therapy, but he ended up bumping into one of the walls that hemmed the bed in on three sides in this tiny room. He tried sitting up in order to crawl down to the end of the bed, but pain in his back stabbed a warning. However embarrassing it was to wake up in bed with a former student, it wasn't worth a day of disability. He abandoned his attempts to remove himself from the bed and remained resting on his side, facing her.

To hide his embarrassment, he met her gaze, directing at her the most hostile obsidian glare he could muster. First years on the receiving end of this glare had been known to wet themselves. She had no expression on her face, but to his chagrin, he could see amusement in her eyes. What was so fucking funny?

She saw all that hostility in his glare and suppressed a grin. So he felt threatened somehow, or probably was just embarrassed, and was trying to take control by frightening her. He was about to find out that Aurors didn't get scared that easily.

Tonks rolled towards him and playfully hooked her uppermost leg over both of his. Their two long noses were almost touching. "What would you like to eat, _Professor?"_ she purred.

His eyes widened in astonishment. "What are you playing at?" he hissed with his usual venom, but the sinister effect was quite spoiled by the fact of his being sideways on a bed, pinned down by a sore back and a woman's leg.

"I mean, it's about eight-thirty, and we're missing breakfast at the castle," she added, drawing back slightly to brush some hair out of her eyes, but continuing to meet his glare. Between the enormous nose, the sunken cheeks, the sallow oily complexion, and the disgusting teeth, he wasn't any less unattractive up close, she thought. And was he just too busy to wash that hair? Maybe if she offered to wash it...she quickly banished that thought. There was something oddly compelling about a man so sadistically honest, who really didn't care what he looked like or whether or not people liked him.

And as a person who could change the structure of her face and body at will, she never put much stock in appearances.

"I'm not hungry," he retorted. Indeed, despite his gaunt frame and not having eaten since the day before, those Muggle pants were uncomfortably tight. Then he realized that they weren't tight around the waist, but lower down, where she was practically pressing up against him.

"I don't think I have much to eat here," she said speculatively. "Maybe some eggs."

He resisted a powerful urge to press up against her, reminding himself that he needed to mind his back. He hadn't been with a woman in...best not to dwell on that right now. Of course his morning erection was unusually hard this morning--he desperately needed to pee. Given his usual sleep problems, he wasn't in the habit of drinking twelve ounces of water just before going to sleep, as he had done the night before in order to swallow those chalky tablets. It was just a reflex, after all.

"I think we should go out for breakfast," he said. "I know a place in Hogsmeade."

"I thought you weren't hungry," she said.

"I'm not," he said shortly.

She looked at him with curiosity. His gaze had gotten somewhat fixed. Was he in pain?

Then she withdrew her leg and crawled so fast down the bed she fell off at the end.

"I'm so sorry," she said, scrambling to her feet, her long black hair falling in curtains about her face. "Does it hurt much?" Her dark eyes were wide with concern.

_So she thinks it's my back, thank Merlin._ "No, not much," he answered honestly. "I just have to get up gradually in order to ease out the...erm...stiffness."

She nodded. "Breakfast in Hogsmead, then. Let me know when you're ready." And she abruptly left the room, bouncing off the doorjamb on each side. But he had caught her eye on the way out.

_She was lying._

But he realized, as he was easing himself to the end of the bed and slowly swinging his feet to the floor, that she didn't mind what she'd noticed. After he Accio'd his shoes and muttered a spell that laced them to his feet, he sat at the end of the bed lost in thought.

When he was barely nineteen, at his first Death Eater party, the new Mrs Avery presented him with a whip and her bare bottom to use it on. Happy to try something new, he whipped her bloody, to the delight of the assembled guests. She became the first of many to receive his punishment, to his ongoing bewilderment. Why anybody would desire to be injured and humiliated was beyond his comprehension, but there seemed to be no end to the number of witches who wanted this kind of treatment. The wealthier and more prestigious their families, the worse they wanted to be punished. Eventually, he was able to extricate himself from this role by claiming that he didn't enjoy hurting people who wanted to be hurt, and everyone believed him.

The only pleasure he ever got from it was in recent years, after the rebirth of the Dark Lord. He would be invited to these elegant parties hosted by wealthy purebloods at their luxuriously appointed manors. As he stood drinking in a secluded corner, waiting for the earliest opportunity to leave without giving offense, he would look about for women of a certain age. They would now be dignified matrons in exquisitely-tailored robes boasting of the accomplishments of their husbands and children. As he found them, he would amuse himself by counting how many still likely wore his stripe marks on their arses.

But the unfortunate truth of his life was that he was a dominant man who did not like submissive women, who were the only sort naturally drawn to him.

Tonks was not a submissive woman, so what did she see in him? What in the hell was she thinking, anyway? If he were found out...then again, she knew the risks, and obviously chose to accept them. And Hogwarts was the safest place in Britain. Whatever happened at Hogwarts would stay at Hogwarts.

And dammit, he was tired of being the Slytherin monk.

She peered tentatively into the bedroom. She had changed into her usual day-face and a conservative hairstyle for her, consisting of platinum blond spikes. "Are you ready?"

He nodded. "Almost." He stood and swept past her down the hall to the bathroom.

It was mid-morning before they arrived at the school in the freezing cold. Even though it was Sunday, hardly anyone was outside, though a few brave souls were zipping about on brooms. Nobody noticed the couple in black cloaks striding across the windswept field to the front door.

Snape paused at the front door. "What do you do now?" he asked in a demanding sort of way, as if she were already back in his class, botching a potion.

Tonks shivered and re-cast a Warming Charm. "I go to Minerva's office, and she'll take over from there, giving me robes, showing me to my room, and such."

"And if you run into Umbridge?"

"I tell her I have official business with you and proceed to the dungeons."

"Right." He touched the massive door lightly, and it swung open easily. "It's probably better if you don't follow me too closely..."

"Ah, Professor Snape!" said a falsely sweet voice. "I was just in the dungeons, and none of your students knew where you were. Not even your prefects."

Snape schooled his face to an expression of bland indifference, with just a hint of a sneer. "Headmistress," he acknowledged. "I had to go to London to pick up some Potions ingredients."

Dolores Umbridge stood looking up at him, her short arms folded. "And stay _overnight? _Without telling anyone? Isn't that highly irregular behaviour from a Professor? Especially a head of house." Her toad-like smile widened. "And it's even more surprising, given your _background,_ that you would bring an Auror with you."

_Look perplexed,_ thought Tonks.

Instead, he scowled fiercely at her, which puzzled her until she noticed the students. To her relief, she didn't see anybody she knew. Nobody was daring to approach or stop and stare openly, but many who happened to be passing through the entrance hall had slowed their progress to a snail's pace and were glancing at them as often as they dared.

Tonks said, "I am here to have a word with Professor Snape, and I happened to encounter him just outside the front door."

Dolores Umbridge's wide smile disappeared as she addressed Tonks. "What a fortunate _coincidence,_ my dear."

Snape evidently had had enough time to think, and said smoothly, "One of my key ingredients was delayed until this morning. My supplier said there was a problem in Damascus. Something to do with Muggle politics...anyway, it was far faster for me to just stay over in London, rather than make two trips in one weekend." He glared at Umbridge. "After all, Saturday nights _are_ free time for teachers."

Umbridge's small, close-set eyes moved between Snape and Tonks. She gestured expansively with one of her short-fingered hands. "I'm sure you are accustomed to Professor Dumbledore's liberal and permissive way of doing things. However, I expect to be informed when any teacher leaves the school grounds. Is that clear?"

"Crystal," he hissed.

Umbridge turned to Tonks, her tone wintry, her expression now positively grotesque. "I am the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister for Magic. The Ministry would inform me if an Auror was being sent to talk to one of my teachers. Who _are_ you, anyway?"

Tonks stepped forwards. "Madam Umbridge, I beg your pardon. I am Auror Tonks. Did you not receive an owl at breakfast about my visit?"

"Of course not," said Umbridge. "There was no such owl."

"It wouldn't surprise me," said Tonks smoothly. "Things have not been running as efficiently at the Ministry since you left to come here. I remember when you were Senior Undersecretary to the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, when I was a little girl. I must say, your work there inspired me to become an Auror. In fact," she blushed convincingly, "it is a great honour to finally meet you, Madam Umbridge."

The toad-like smile was back on Umbridge's face. "Well, maybe if you could get your supervisor to send something along retrospectively, I can overlook such a drastic oversight this one time."

Tonks nodded with feigned eagerness. "Few understand the importance of properly-completed paperwork, ma'am. People in the Minister's office are always saying how impeccable your files are; that any document can easily be found, however trivial."

Still smiling, Umbridge raised a finger admonishingly. "Ah, but you would do well to remember that there's no such thing as trivial paperwork, my dear. Whatever you do in the field, if it's not properly documented, then it may as well have never happened. Off to the dungeons with you. Be sure and ask Professor Snape lots of questions about his _background."_

Tonks grinned. "Oh, we already know all about Professor Snape's _background,_ ma'am."

Umbridge giggled. "Yes, lots of documentation there." She waved one of her short-fingered hands dismissively. "Off with you."

After they descended to below ground, Snape cast a Silencing Charm about them as they continued to the dungeons. "If your conversation with Umbridge had continued much longer, I would have vomited. And that comment about my _background..._are you mad?"

Tonks shrugged. "The Ministry file on you is pretty extensive. We know all about you, Severus."

They stopped before a plain wooden door. Snape paused before it, and inclined his head to Tonks, smiling slightly. It was not a pleasant expression. "Know all about me, do you?" He snorted. "I should think not."


	6. Chapter 6

In The Dungeons

Snape opened the door to his chambers and gestured for Tonks to enter.

"We have a problem," he said, without preamble, as soon as he'd re-warded the door. "You need to go to Minerva's office, but if you run into Umbridge again, you can't use the same excuse twice." He began to pace up and down the small room.

Tonks watched him, bemused. Unless he was asleep or in extreme pain he seemed incapable of remaining still.

"You didn't have a contingency plan?" she asked.

"We didn't expect Umbridge to be waiting inside the front door."

"I could just morph into some random person," she said. "And transfigure my clothes into...into..."

"Into what?" he retorted. "Hogwarts isn't a public place. A stranger wandering about would be challenged by teachers, prefects, and probably Umbridge, considering our luck today. We took great care in developing your cover story, and if you get yourself arrested..."

"Yes, I understand. My cover will be blown." Tonks chewed her lip thoughtfully. "What about using a Disillusionment Charm on me?"

He shook his head. "The anti-Apparation wards also prevent Disillusionment Charms. Otherwise, what would be the point?"

"If only I had my trunk with me," she said wistfully.

"You have an invisibility cloak in it?"

"No, I could have gotten inside the trunk, and you could have brought it to Minerva's office." She brightened. "Could I borrow _your_ trunk?"

"Why would I have a trunk?"

"Surely everybody has a trunk..."

"I have no use for a trunk."

"What about when you travel?"

"I'm a wizard. Everything I need can be shrunk and placed in my pockets."

"But surely you had a trunk at one point..."

"I don't any more," he retorted. "We'll have to think of something else."

They couldn't think of a good reason for why an Auror would come to Hogwarts bearing a trunk and had hidden it at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. They'd managed to transport it from Tonks' flat by sitting down upon it side-by-side while Disapparating, at Snape's suggestion. Though they'd avoided any further damage to Snape's back, they experienced an awkward landing upon arrival at the castle gates. Tonks planned to fetch it once she was in the guise of a student.

"Portkey?" she ventured.

He shook his head. "Dumbledore still insists on making all the unofficial Portkeys. We could as a last resort, but I should hate to drag him all the way back up to the northern hemisphere just for that." He ran a hand through his hair pensively. "If we can't solve this little quandary ourselves, surely the Dark Lord will have us."

Then he smacked himself in the head. "How could I have been so stupid?"

Tonks looked at him in surprise.

"We don't have to go to Minerva's office to fetch Gryffindor robes for you. Dobby!"

The house-elf materialised with a crack and bowed low before Snape. "How can Dobby serve Professor Snape?"

"Fetch some Gryffindor student robes to fit her." Snape commanded, gesturing at Tonks.

If Dobby found this request odd, he gave no sign. He straightened to regard Tonks for a moment, then bowed low towards Snape once more before vanishing.

Snape looked back at Tonks. "Sit," he said curtly, conjuring another chair. "We need to have a word about your _appearance."_ He settled himself in the chair opposite and rapped on the chair's arm. A pewter tea service materialised atop a table of an appropriate size. As well as tea, there was a plate of chocolate biscuits and a bowl of Blackpool candy broken into pieces.

Tonks helped herself to a cup of tea and a piece of candy. "Albus may be gone, but at least he left his candy," she quipped.

"That's because he isn't really gone," replied Snape, nudging the bowl of candy aside with an obligatory sneer as he reached for the teapot. "If he were truly departed, there would be no more of his sweets at Hogwarts."

They sipped their tea in silence for a moment before Snape said mildly, "As I was saying, you should use your natural face, only morphing enough to achieve a younger appearance."

She shook her head. "It's not necessary," she said.

"I think it is," he said. "The less you are morphed, the less clumsy you will be. Simple, really."

"I'm not as clumsy as I was, and even so, I got through your class just fine, didn't I?" she snapped.

"Not as clumsy as you used to be?" He smirked. "Mrs Black says otherwise every time you knock over that troll leg umbrella stand. As far as my class goes, I tightened up my standards since you graduated. For the sake of everyone's safety, I now refuse to admit anybody with less than an O in their Potions OWL."

"I never hurt anybody," she protested.

"No, but that was just lucky. Or have you forgotten the little incident before Easter break in your seventh year?" She saw a triumphant gleam in his eyes and realized that he knew she remembered.

_She was walking back from the ingredients cupboard when she tripped on either an irregularity in the stone floor, her own feet, or an outstretched Slytherin foot; she never found out. Her hand holding the Acromantula venom jerked sideways, spraying a majestic arc of pungent liquid over several rows of desks. Students crying, "Eww!" tried to shield themselves, but nobody covered their cauldrons, which bubbled ominously for a moment before vomiting magenta-coloured goo in all directions._

_"Evanesco!" cried Snape instantly, and the mess disappeared from everyone's robes, faces, the floor, the ceiling, and the walls. Snape's black eyes darted about searching for any trace he may have missed. Seeing none, he fetched Tonks' flask, lying miraculously unbroken on the floor before her outstretched hand. He examined the flask, sniffing the contents before hauling the mortified Metamorphagus to her feet and beginning a verbal count of emptied cauldrons._

_"Eleven...twelve batches destroyed. Congratulations, Miss Tonks. You have set a new record for wanton destruction in my class. That will be...let's see...fifty points from Gryffindor, and a weeks' detention." He brought his face closer to that of the trembling girl. "You are fortunate your little misstep produced nothing more than a harmless mixture, Miss Tonks." He lifted his head to address the class. "I had assumed that anyone achieving at least an E in their Potions OWL was capable of the physical coordination necessary for handling the more dangerous ingredients I make available to students at this level." Tonks remembered looking at her feet, struggling not to cry. "Apparently," Snape continued, his voice barely above a whisper, "when Miss Tonks took her Potions OWL, she was experiencing a day of unusual grace."_

_The Slytherins sniggered, then Bill Weasley indignantly exclaimed, "That's not fair!"_

_Snape slowly turned to face Bill. "Twenty points from Gryffindor," he said lazily. He started to turn away, then he said, "Or did you have something further to say, Mr Weasley?"_

_Bill glared at Snape. "That's not fair, sir. Metamorphagi can't help their clumsiness."_

_"So I've noticed," interjected Snape, to more Slytherin sniggering._

_"Because their physical forms needn't stay fixed, they have trouble maintaining their..."_

_Over his shoulder at Tonks, Snape said, "He's done research on you. How touching." The Slytherins laughed outright. To Bill, Snape said, "Another twenty points from Gryffindor for insolence and wasting class time with irrelevant explanations. And you needn't worry about Miss Tonks. Rest assured, I will have her performing tasks that help improve eye-hand coordination. For homework..." he was addressing the class in general. "Two feet of parchment on what happens when excessive Acromantula venom is added to Dopaminergic Draught before the final distillation."_

_Tonks remembered the glares from Gryffindor and Slytherin students alike before she ran from the dungeon._

"You punished everyone for my mistake," Tonks reminisced.

"And an expensive mistake it was. Why should only one person learn from it?" he replied. He poured himself more tea before continuing. "These days, if you are excessively clumsy, everyone will wonder what came over me to allow such a dunderhead into my NEWT class." He leaned back in his chair and gazed at her over his teacup. "Why are you being so stubborn?"

Just then, Dobby reappeared, bearing a neatly-folded robe. Setting the robe on the tea table he said, "If Professor Snape is not wanting anything more..."

"Wait a moment, Dobby," said Snape. To Tonks, he said, "I want to show you something. Revert to your natural face."

Tonks looked from Dobby to Snape in confusion and slight alarm.

Dobby said, "If it makes miss uncomfortable, Dobby should leave."

Snape said, "I forbid it."

The house elf's ears drooped, but he stayed where he was.

Snape said again, "Revert to your natural appearance."

Tonks sighed and looked uneasily at the house elf. She scrunched up her nose, and Snape and Dobby both watched in fascination as her hair darkened and lengthened, her skin lightened, her heart-shaped face narrowed, its cheekbones becoming more prominent, and her twinkling dark eyes became deep-set.

She looked between Snape and Dobby, her formerly-pert nose now almost as long as Snape's, though straight rather than hooked. An aristocratic nose, thought Snape.

"Can I change back now?" she asked a little defensively.

"You are changed back," he replied softly. He turned to the house-elf. "Do you see a resemblance between this woman and Bellatrix Black?"

Tonks covered her face with her hands. Her fingers were longer, thinner, paler. "Oh, for Merlin's..."

"Dobby ought to know," interrupted Snape in the same soft voice. "He served the Malfoys for...Dobby?"

Ears quivering, eyes wide, Dobby replied, "It makes miss uncomfortable."

"Answer the question, Dobby." Snape's tone was slightly sharper.

Tonks lowered her hands and smiled sympathetically at the house-elf. "Don't worry about me, Dobby. To be honest, I am curious."

"Well?" said Snape with a note of impatience.

Dobby gulped and said, "The hair and the shape of her face is similar. But the eyes is all wrong."

Snape looked at the house elf in a calculating sort of way. "What do you mean? Her eyes are dark and deep-set like Bella's?"

But Dobby vigorously shook his head. "When _she"_ indicating Tonks, "looks at Dobby, Dobby feels completely different from when Mrs Lestrange looks at Dobby."

Snape regarded Tonks in silence. Without looking away, he said, "You may go, Dobby."

With a sigh of relief, Dobby disappeared.

"You bear only a passing resemblance to your aunt, you know," said Snape.

At a loss for words, Tonks could only stare back at him.

"If I were you," Snape continued silkily, "I'd be more embarrassed about looking like Sirius Black." He held up a mirror. "When did you last look at yourself in a mirror? Your _real_ self?"

She glared at him, avoiding looking in the mirror. "One could say the same to you," she retorted.

He rolled his eyes. "I see myself in a mirror every time I brush my teeth."

She smirked. "Like I said..."

His expression darkened. Grabbing her arm, he pulled her towards him, brandishing the mirror in front of her face while she twisted her head back and forth. Through clenched teeth he hissed, "You are putting this mission at risk because you are unable to face _who you are."_

She yanked her arm free and stalked away from him. When she turned to face him, her deep-set eyes were bright with angry tears. "I can't imagine how hard it must be for you," she said venomously, "to go through life looking like that."

In the silence that followed, she stared at him defiantly, internally bracing herself for his reaction.

Then he smiled. It was not a nice smile, though he probably couldn't smile nicely, given the state of his teeth. "This is the part," he said in his low, dangerous voice, "where I am supposed to eject you from my office in a rage." He continued in a more conversational tone. "Your cousin also forgets that I am not fifteen years old anymore and can see through such transparent ploys." He smirked and tapped his fingers on the back of the mirror almost playfully.

She stalked back towards him. "Give me the fucking mirror," she snarled, grabbing it from his hand and raising it in front of her face.

"I wish you'd save the insults for Potions class," he said mildly. "It's been a madhouse around here lately. I could do with taking lots of points off Gryffindor."

"Like you don't anyway," she said in a distracted voice from behind the mirror.

She lowered the mirror, and he saw her expression of puzzled wonderment.

"I look like a Black," she said. "Like my aunt."

He nodded. "Like the house-elf said, it's the eyes."

Bella's gaze was usually sly and cruel; that is, when her eyes weren't shining with frank madness as if she were lit up from within. Even with the family resemblance and the glint of anger, Tonks' gaze looked no more like her aunt's than it did Mad-Eye Moody's.

"I didn't believe you," she said.

"I know," he replied, glancing at his wall clock. "As a Head of House, I am expected to make an appearance at lunch, and my absence from breakfast has already been noticed."

"Yes, of course," she said, raising the mirror to look at herself again. For years, Tonks' mother had tried to make her look at her real face, and she had always refused. But Tonks' mum had always asked nicely. Maybe a little arm-twisting was what she needed, but that didn't justify the smugness of this man, who was now smirking at her slightly. She'd show him gratitude, all right.

"One more thing," she said. She stepped close, grabbed the back of his neck, and pulled him down into a passionate kiss.

For a moment he was too astonished to do anything but enjoy being kissed by a young woman. Then he recovered himself enough that he began to kiss her back, as if young women threw themselves at him every day, and he'd been expecting this all along. So this is what it's like to be Lucius, he thought. He had closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her when he felt a slight movement of her body, and he reminded himself that for appearances' sake, he really couldn't miss lunch.

Then she released him from the kiss and he opened his eyes--and staggered back a few steps in shock.

She was slightly shorter and thinner, her somewhat pear-shaped body now more boyish. Her angular features were softer, the high cheekbones now less well-defined. Overall, she looked ten years younger, the approximate age of a seventh-year Hogwarts student.

She grinned mischievously. "Do you think I should have put the Gryffindor student robes on first?" She summoned the robes from where Dobby had left them and entered the bathroom.

Snape was in a fury. How could he be so stupid as to forget what inveterate pranksters the Blacks were? Just a few years after Sirius had almost gotten him killed, Bella had nearly succeeded, and just for a laugh, ha ha.

Tonks emerged from the bathroom in the Gryffindor robes. "Guess I'd better get to Minerva's office before she has to go to lunch, too." She looked askance at him. "What's wrong now? You got your way." She spread her hands before her face.

"Leave my chambers _now!"_ he hissed.

She smiled and nodded. "Of course, _Professor._ See you in Potions, sir." She curtsied and left, satisfied that this ruse was going to be easy to maintain. Once she had the Gryffindor robes on, Snape was easily as vicious to her as he was to any real Gryffindor student. And acting appropriately terrified of him was going to be loads of fun. Though that kiss seemed to have left him a bit wrong-footed. Maybe she shouldn't have done it, but she'd always been a bit impulsive. Another Black family trait, she thought, pausing after she stepped out of Snape's quarters to bring her hands tentatively upwards. Funny how the curves of her own face felt unfamiliar, as if it were just another morph. She could get used to this, but at the same time, she preferred that nobody besides Snape knew the significance of this face.

"What I don't understand," she was saying to Professor McGonagall, "is why you didn't just put me in fifth year. Surely I could keep a closer eye on Harry Potter if I actually took some classes with him."

Professor McGonagall shook her head. "If you get too close to him and his friends, they might recognize you. Especially Hermione Granger--it's been a long time since I've seen such a clever young witch."

Tonks nodded. "Remus said Hermione was the only student to figure out he was a werewolf."

Professor McGonagall's mouth thinned. "Yes, well, she didn't come to that conclusion without any help at all. Speaking of whom..."

"You needn't worry," Tonks quickly said. "I can handle him."

The Gryffindor headmistress regarded her sharply for a moment before saying, "Maybe you can trust him with your life, but you wouldn't trust him with anything less. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand," replied Tonks, not at all sure she did.

"Then let's show you where you're sleeping. You remember the way to Gryffindor Tower? I don't have to show you? Excellent--we'll take the shortcut." She stood and tapped the rear wall of her office. The wall didn't change in any perceptible way, but the professor walked through it and disappeared. Tonks followed and found herself in the Gryffindor common room.

Many students had already wandered down for lunch, but there were at least a dozen, gathered around one table, to stare at the newcomer.

Fred and George Weasley had a number of objects spread across a tabletop, which vanished at the appearance of their head of house. They sat back in their chairs, hands folded, affecting looks of round-eyed innocence. Harry and Ron were sitting at the same table, and Hermione was standing off to the side, as if in disapproval. Tonks avoided their eyes, looking away as if in shyness, though she saw Hermione frown slightly.

Professor McGonagall stepped up to this table. "This is Dora Black, who has transferred here from Beauxbatons for her final year. She has been sorted into Gryffindor, and I would like you all to make her feel welcome."

Hermione stepped forwards, smiling importantly from behind her Prefect badge. _"Bonjour, Dora. Comment allez-vous?"_

_"Comme ci, comme ca," _replied Tonks, looking at her feet and pitching her voice lower than usual, trying to project the sort of demeanor she'd decided upon, of being at once haughty and shy. "I am English, actually," she added, making a mental note not to divulge too much of her cover story at once, recalling the admonishments of her instructors, who warned student Aurors how suspicious it looks when anyone is too eager share a lot of personal information with new acquaintances.

Professor McGonagall said, "Let me show you where you are sleeping before we are all late for lunch," and swept off towards the girls' quarters. Tonks stumbled as she hurried after, catching herself on the back of a chair while several bemused students watched.

"Do you think whatever Fred and George were up to bears investigating?" asked Tonks when they were out of earshot of the common room.

"They're better than the poltergeist," replied Professor McGonagall cryptically.

She lead Tonks into one of the familiar rooms with four-poster beds surrounded by curtains. To her surprise, her trunk was already on the floor at the base of one of the beds.

"Here is your schedule," said Professor McGonagall, handing Tonks a piece of parchment. "You will notice that it has half the number of courses a seventh-year usually takes. If Madam Umbridge pries, and she will, you were on an accelerated track at Beauxbatons, and had finished half your required courses by the end of the fall term. We're hoping a reduced schedule will minimize the necessity of using the Time-Turner."

Tonks looked at the schedule after the professor left. No History of Magic, thank Merlin. Just Double Potions with the Slytherins first thing Monday morning. Severus is going to be disappointed when he sees how much less clumsy I am, she thought.


	7. Chapter 7

"Before you start today's potion, place your essays on Mandrake Draught in front of you," commanded Snape. As everyone brought out their essays, he summoned them to his desktop, where they piled neatly. He leafed through them and directed his glare at Tonks sitting in the middle of the Gryffindors.

"No essay, Miss Black?" he sneered.

Tonks cowered convincingly. "I only just arrived at Hogwarts, sir."

He swept down the aisle stared at her down his long nose. "You are correct," he conceded. "Only five points from Gryffindor this time. Next time, I won't be so lenient." He whirled and stalked back to his desk, and Tonks felt a wave of nostalgia overtake her as the Slytherins sniggered and the Gryffindors glared at the Potions master's retreating back.

"That's not fair!" whispered one of her putative housemates angrily, and Tonks held her breath in anticipation as Snape paused almost imperceptibly. But he continued to the front of the room as if he hadn't heard anything. Her perceptions heightened by Auror training, Tonks had quickly realised that Snape missed nothing but ignored a lot. Was this always true? She resolved to ask him.

"Today you will be making Blood Replenishing Potion. The ingredients are here." He flicked his wand at some cupboards, opening them. "The directions are here." They appeared on the blackboard. "Keep in mind that too free a hand with the dragon scales will destroy the blood's ability to clot, causing the ingestor to bleed from every tiny cut and orifice." He smiled unpleasantly. "I will be looking for volunteers at the end of class. You have one hour."

Tonks glanced at the cone-shaped flask on Snape's desk with amusement, recalling her terror in this class ten years previously. He still didn't bother to mention to the class that he kept the antidotes close at hand.

Snape caught Tonk's eye and sneered. "Staring at the directions will not conjure this potion, Miss Black," he chided, and she shook herself out of her reverie and set to work.

Half an hour later, she was very pleased with herself. Her long-fingered hands, so unfamiliar to her, were unexpectedly dexterous. Her partner, a shy boy who haltingly gave his name as Siddiq, was not, and Tonks rescued more than one flask before it hit the floor. She was wondering how he'd ever made it into the NEWT class until he'd prevented her from adding an ingredient too soon, and recalled he'd only glanced at the blackboard before beginning his preparations in a way that only looked bumbling. She smiled her thanks, and Siddiq blushed vividly. She looked up to the blackboard to see what she had been about to do wrong and caught Snape looking at her, slight amusement colouring his dour expression, before he turned back to marking the heap of parchments.

On her way to lunch, Tonks came face-to-face with Harry, who was walking away from the Great Hall, a sullen and slightly puzzled look on his face, being led by a smug-looking Filch. Tonks looked quickly away to avoid catching his eye, but he did not seem to notice her and soon vanished around a corner. Some of what Filch was saying drifted back.

"...if you'd known I had it in my power to whip you raw, would you, now?" Filch was sounding positively gleeful.

Tonks stopped in her tracks, turned, frowned, and hastened back up the corridor as if she'd forgotten something important on her way to lunch. Quickly catching up to Filch and Harry, she stayed an unobtrusive distance behind them as they continued walking, but increased her pace when they stopped and Filch said, "Here we are," knocking three times on a door. As Harry and Filch entered the room, Tonks strode past the door without slowing or stopping. She glanced sideways and caught a glimpse of a horrible, toad-like mouth stretched in a wide smile, kittens on decorative plates gamboling about in the background. A board on the desk read, "Head..." something in raised gold lettering; Harry was standing in the way. Tonks turned around for another pass and heard a resounding "Thunk" as Filch closed the heavy wooden door, and there was the faint hiss of an Imperturbable Charm being applied.

Tonks continued to walk smartly, as if she was now rushing to lunch. At her approach, Filch stopped and sneered at her, revealing mossy teeth.

"The Headmistress' business is none of yours," he growled. His eyes were narrowed in suspicion, but the eyes of the scrawny cat that leapt into his arms were wide open and seemed to glow faintly in the dim corridor.

Tonks quickly affected a look of confused nervousness. "I wasn't...I mean, I was supposed to meet..."

"The Headmistress will not be undermined," he snarled, gently stroking his cat, who continued to stare in that unblinking way cats have, that makes the person being stared at grateful not to be mouse-sized. "Anyone who tries will be severely punished. Oh yes, they will, won't they, my sweet?" He giggled in a slightly maniacal way.

"May I go to lunch, sir?" Tonks asked with forced politeness.

He waved a hand dismissively before resuming the patting of his cat. "Remember when we used to starve them, my sweet? When we'd lock them in the dungeons and give them nothing but stale crusts of bread and a slimy bowl of water? We'd starve them until their teeth fell out." He cackled. "And then the matron would grow them new teeth, of course," he added regretfully. He pulled aside a tapestry and disappeared behind it, though Tonks could still hear his cheerful humming, receding as he continued down a hidden corridor.

"Creepy, isn't he?" said a boy's voice.

"He's the mayor of Creepytown," said another boy with a similar voice.

Tonks turned and smiled, stopping herself from saying, "Wotcher." Be timid, she reminded herself. "It's...Fred and George," she said shyly, looking from one to the other. "Or is it George and Fred? I'm not very good with names." She looked at her feet bashfully.

Fred--and she knew it was Fred because, in fact, she was very good at names--said, "Everybody's lousy at names when it comes to us. Even our own mother."

"We switch places in class sometimes, and only McGonagall and Snape ever notice."

"Yes, but we've been able to fool McGonagall sometimes, but never Snape."

"He just looks in your eyes and says, 'Five points from Gryffindor, and get back in your proper seats.'"

"We've met you before, haven't we? I mean, before today."

Tonks had an explanation ready. "Maybe from Zonko's? I remembered you because you knew loads about pranks."

George frowned slightly and started to say, "Perhaps..."

Fred was looking down the corridor, and cried, "Look out!"

Fred and George both grabbed Tonks and pulled her to the wall beside them. An enchanted flaming parrot came screaming around the corridor yelling swear words. With a final, "Shiiiiiiiiit!" it crashed into the wall at the end of the corridor, exploding into smaller birds of a sort Tonks didn't recognize, that kept saying, "Fuck! Fuck!" so quickly it sounded like chickens clucking. These smaller birds then disappeared with some muttered imprecations and a sparkling, "Poof!"

"Brilliant!" exclaimed Tonks with real enthusiasm. But Fred and George were ignoring her, whispering to each other, and Fred had just said something about a crate one floor below when there was a window-rattling, "Boom!" Bits of dust and tiny chunks of masonry drifted down.

"In here!" whispered Fred urgently, and they ducked into a vestibule hidden behind a painting of a vestibule just before a door opened, and Dolores Umbridge came wheezing down the corridor, short wand clutched in stubby fingers.

George peeked out from behind the painting and snickered. "The stairs changed just as she was stepping on them. She had to leap like a frog."

"You mean, like a toad."

"Toad, frog. What's the diff?"

"Toads are the ones with warts on them."

"You're absolutely right, brother. I stand corrected."

"We'd better take the other stairs."

"They are the other stairs now," noted George as he continued to peer out. He smiled at Tonks. "We have nothing to lose. But you stay here."

Tonks opened her mouth to protest but the two were already running down the corridor with a long-legged teenage boy stride she could not possibly match. As the two disappeared down the stairs, she was about to step out from behind the painting when Umbridge's office door opened again, and a bewildered-looking Harry peered out before walking down the corridor past her. She waited until he'd descended the stairs as well before she crept out and started towards the Great Hall, enjoying the fireworks all the way to lunch.

ovovovovovovovovovovovovovovov

"They won't be playing any of their pranks in my class," said Snape silkily, sipping a drink. Tonks had contacted him after lunch, telling him she'd seen Harry being lead into Umbridge's office, and Snape told her to come to his office in the evening before curfew, bringing Potions books as a decoy.

She'd told him all she knew about Harry's interrogation, which wasn't much. Now she sat on a low stool in front of his desk and watched him drink. She shifted slightly on the stool, wincing from the splinters. "So you know about Fred and George's little sideline?"

He set the drink down and scowled at his heap of marking. "I told them to remind their customers that I had special punishments in reserve for students using those Skiving Snackboxes in my classes." He threw down his quill and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. "I don't have time for pranks."

Tonks thought about her arrival at the castle, when she ambushed Snape by morphing into her student form while kissing him, with a twinge of guilt. Or maybe that was a twinge from her arse--she tried not to aggravate the splinters by wiggling around. The three-legged milking stool she sat upon was not quite as high as her knees or as wide as her hips, and damned if she was going to tell him how uncomfortable it was.

Given his history, Snape was expected to be a little thin-skinned with regard to pranking but if he was allowed to be a snide, arrogant, obnoxious, sarcastic, bullying git, then she was allowed to be whimsical. It wasn't like she tried to get him eaten by a dark creature. And conjuring a butt-breaking chair for a visiting fellow Order member? She added petulant to the list.

She stared at him with her deep-set eyes. "I'm only here to help, you know," she snapped.

He looked at her and his eye narrowed. "You want to help? Catch." He threw something at her and she caught it easily, feeling slightly elated at her newfound physical coordination despite her anger.

Puzzled, she regarded the small bottle in her hand. "You want a sample of something from me, Severus?" she asked snidely. "If you want the blood of a virgin, I'm fresh out."

He raised an eyebrow, then looked away, turning back to his marking. "Fill it up at the tap," he said curtly.

"I'm not your house-elf," she snapped.

He looked up. "You said you're here to help." He took another essay from the pile and began marking it, quill scratching audibly across parchment.

Her retort died on her lips. He glared up at her, dark circles visible under his dark eyes even when he looked back down to the enormous heap of parchments, selecting another with ink-stained hands.

Even if he was being a prat, it wasn't too much to ask, really. She found the faucet and filled the bottle, careful not to get a single drop on the outside, and handed it back to Snape. After he capped the bottle, he touched the cap with his wand and a white ribbon-like substance about an inch wide materialised and wrapped around the lid and neck of the bottle, forming a tidy seal.

He looked up, a glint of mischief briefly visible through his dour expression. "Umbridge took the 'last' bottle of my 'Veritaserum' to interrogate Potter. I need to have another bottle ready."

"You have Veritaserum running from the taps in the dungeons? Can't say I'm surprised."

He flipped his quill in an irritated gesture. "Yes, I've got hot and cold running Veritaserum down here. That's why I only drink whisky." As if reminded, he lifted his glass to take another sip.

And that's why you don't wash your hair, she thought.

He glared at her. "Very funny." He bunged the bottle into a drawer in his desk and gestured vaguely. "Order meeting tomorrow morning at six. Minerva thinks you shouldn't need the Time-Turner, and I agree. You can just sneak out of bed. If you're caught, a Gryffindor violating curfew is normal behaviour around here." He yawned enormously. "And then I've got Remedial Potions with Potter tomorrow evening." He leaned his head into his hands, fingers buried in greasy hair.

If it weren't for You-Know-You, he'd be his own worse enemy, Tonks thought. He's easily the hardest-working member of the Order, and nearly everyone in it thinks of him as the greasy git who's probably hedging his bets by playing both sides against the middle. Like Bill Weasley, and what has he done lately, besides give Fleur English lessons?

"I'm sure she's giving him reciprocal French lessons." He was looking up at her, smirking slightly.

She looked away from his penetrating gaze.

He continued, "Some people's thoughts are easier to see than others."

"Are you saying I'm simple-minded?" she retorted.

He shook his head. "Stupid people are harder to read because their minds are chaotic, disorganised." He made a wry face. "If they were easy to read, I'd have fewer explosions in my classes." He tossed another parchment on what she presumed was the "finished" pile.

Tonks sat silent on the stool, contemplating what he'd just said. Did he just say she wasn't stupid? If he did, coming from him, it would be high praise.

"If you're not going to offer me a drink, I'm going," she announced.

He paused in the middle of uncapping a fresh bottle of red ink. "You're too young to be drinking," he said, pointedly taking another sip of his drink.

She grinned. "Am not," she said in mock petulance and morphed into her adult appearance.

His eyes widened. "Are you mad?" he snapped, warding the door to his office. "What if Draco Malfoy had walked in just now?"

"I'd say, 'Wotcher, cousin,' and I'd Obliviate him quicker than he could say, 'half-breed,'" she replied, conjuring a glass and pouring herself a drink with long, graceful fingers before sitting back down on the splintery milking stool. "By the way, you were wrong about the Slytherins not smuggling Firewhisky anymore."

He narrowed his eyes at her. What game was she playing? "I've had enough of your pranks," he hissed.

She raised her slightly more bushy eyebrows at him. "Pranks? I didn't know you thought my talents were a joke, Severus."

"It's the way you use your...never mind." He rested his head upon his hands again. "Just leave."

In response, she came to sit on the edge of his desk.

He looked up and sighed. "What are you doing?" he asked in weary exasperation.

"Don't be ridiculous," she replied, scooting further onto his desk. She went to lean back on one hand and upset the bottle of red ink. "Whoops!" She regarded her dripping hand ruefully. "Old habits die hard."

He promptly vanished the ink before it flowed onto the floor. "Another zero, Miss Tonks." He lifted her ink-stained hand and vanished the ink. But he did not release her hand, instead cradling it slightly as if he were admiring her long, slender fingers.

"Sorry to spoil your marking," she said.

He released her hand and tapped the side of his desk. A lower drawer slid out, revealing orderly rows of red ink bottles completely filling the drawer.

She peered at the bottles. "If you'd rather keep working..." She started sliding off his desk.

He grabbed her wrist. "I don't think so." He seized her chin and turned her head so that she was facing him directly and stared into her eyes.

"You are sure about this," he said after a moment, and released her wrist. He turned and regarded the shelves on the wall behind his desk and muttered an incantation, disappearing through the wall without looking back.

Tonks stood and approached the same wall. On the back wall of McGonagall's office there hung an attractive tapestry of Scottish countryside in the spring. Before she walked through that wall, she felt as if she was about to step into the middle of this scenery, even thinking she could momentarily smell spring flowers in full bloom.

The shelves on the back wall of Snape's office, much like the shelves on the other walls, were laden with jars of potions ingredients. This wall seemed to be reserved for the especially stomach-turning potions ingredients: many-eyed monstrosities she'd never seen in a living state, a row of jars containing what looked like shrunken heads, and various mutilated bits of things twisted as if in agony, suspended in murky gelatin. Students standing in front of the desk had no choice but to look at these when they glanced away from the teacher's face.

She took a deep breath and held it before stepping through the wall and found herself in Snape's sitting room. And she found Snape, bumping into him before she'd taken half a step on the other side of the portal.

He seized her upper arms, peering intently into her eyes. "Have you any idea how dangerous this is for you and what the consequences would be for you if I were found out?"

"I can't imagine any place safer," she replied, and meant it. As if Hogwarts wasn't safe enough without being behind metre-thick stone walls and the wards of the Slytherin head of house.

As he embraced her, he said into her ear, "This may be the stupidest thing you've ever done."

She chuckled and replied, "I'll tell you later if I think so, too."


	8. Chapter 8

She awoke at five from the bed sinking down as the person beside her sat up. A torch lit in its sconce, and she turned her head to look at his back. He was every bit as pallid and bony as she expected, his pale skin marred by some odd scars in addition to the Dark Mark. And he'd been surprisingly energetic for a man at the end of an eighteen-hour day.

For two years, Tonks had shared the apartment in Earls Court with a fellow Auror. He was handsome, charming, and a bit of a rogue, reminding Tonks of her cousin Sirius from what she could remember of him before Azkaban. He lavished her with romantic attention, taking her to the finest restaurants in both Muggle and wizarding London, giving her jewelry on every holiday where a gift might be expected, conjuring candy and flowers, and so forth. But in bed, he considered himself an expert on the female body, rebuffing her attempts to tell him what she liked. As far as she was concerned, being licked on her neck felt like she was being greeted by someone's out-of-control dog, and having fingers roughly shoved inside her was no better than a visit to a sadistic gynaecologist. After months of holding out hope that he was capable of making love in a way that wasn't boring or painful, she broke up with him. Their coworkers were alternately astonished with her, and sympathetic with him.

And now she was voluntarily entering a bedroom with a man who wouldn't buy flowers unless they were useful in a potion.

He spelled off their clothes in a single perfunctory gesture and waved at the bed. Shivering, she climbed under the covers to find he had applied a Warming Charm. She started to speak, but he had climbed on top of her, silencing her with a finger to her lips. He looked deep into her eyes. She was thinking about sex with an ex-boyfriend, making it plain to him what she didn't want, but he kept doing it anyway. What a prat. Surely any intelligent man would find pleasing a woman much more of an intriguing challenge than merely brutalising her. He tried to look farther into her mind, but she was telling him what she liked with her body. He allowed the last vestiges of his mental discipline slip away, and reveled in sheer sensation.

"What time is it?" she asked sleepily.

His head snapped around. "Just after five," he replied.

Standing, he crossed the room and vanished through a wall, emerging seconds later wearing a robe. "Still in bed?" he inquired silkily. "We have to be at Headquarters in under an hour."

She sat up, shivering. "It's freezing in here."

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, that makes it easier to get up, don't you think? The cold motivates you to dress and get moving." He sat back down on the edge of the bed to put shoes on. Bending down cautiously, he was gratified to discover that he could easily double over and touch the floor. His back hadn't felt this good in ages. Makes sense, he thought. If extreme pain damages the back, then perhaps the reverse... She had thrown the covers off and was stretching her naked self sinuously on his sheets. She was not fat, but definitely was heavier than most of the forms she took voluntarily. He never understood why women always wanted to be thinner. They carried any extra weight in all the right places.

"Makes me want to stay in the warm bed," she said.

He shifted on the bed to run a hand over the ample curve of her hip. "You probably shouldn't accept so much chocolate from the Headmaster," he said, standing, and easily ducked the flying pillow, which disappeared through the same portal where he had gone to fetch his clothes.

She looked towards the part of the room where the pillow had vanished. "Why do you Disillusion your wardrobe?" she asked as she climbed into her clothes.

He shook his head. "I don't. These rooms are the old torture chambers. The doors and connecting corridors are disillusioned so that each room appears to have no way out. My wardrobe is just inside the next room. It gets too cluttered, having all my things in here."

She chuckled and asked, "Why do you live...who builds a torture chamber in a school, anyway?"

"The former Slytherin head's rooms are next to an exterior wall, and I can't have that. As for the torture chamber, in the past, the Board of Governors had...less complicated attitudes towards student discipline."

"The good old days, huh?"

"Indeed." He retrieved his wand and put it somewhere in his robes. "A little trauma helps children achieve a greater degree of emotional depth than if they haven't suffered."

"That's a very interesting rationalisation."

"For what?" He smirked. "I would be permitted to hex your cousin in self-defense, you know." Tonks blinked at the sudden left turn in the conversation.

"Why would Sirius attack you...?" She looked at the messy bed in sudden realisation, and turned back to him with some alarm. "You wouldn't dare!" She stabbed an accusatory finger at him. "If you told Sirius about this, he might do something that wouldn't just hurt him..." Her voice trailed away as his grin grew wider, to the point where he appeared to be mimicking a certain amphibian Headmistress. She placed her hands on her hips. "That's not funny."

"Yes it is." He jerked his head. "This way." She followed him through a different wall from the one leading to his wardrobe and they were in a corridor of indefinite length, torches lighting only just ahead of them. "Better change to Auror Tonks," he said. "We'll be outside soon." He glanced down at her body. "And the student robes will fit you better."

"Bastard," she hissed, morphing into her Auror Tonks appearance.

"Irrelevant," he retorted, gesturing dismissively as he set off down the corridor.

"Wotcher, Sirius," greeted Tonks as she entered the kitchen at 12 Grimmauld Place, closely followed by Snape. Sirius' smile disappeared when he saw Snape. In contrast, Snape smiled broadly at Sirius, who in return looked angry and a bit nervous.

Sirius looked uneasily away from Snape. "I've made tea," he said to Tonks.

"Thank you," said Snape. Sirius flinched. Snape fetched two cups and filled them. "Tonks? If I recall, you take almost as much sugar as Albus." He spooned sugar into one of the cups and handed it to her, simultaneously pulling out a chair in an exaggerated gesture of chivalry.

"What are you playing at?" growled Sirius. Snape grinned in reply, sipping his tea.

Remus Lupin appeared in the doorway, a petite, dark-haired woman at his side. Remus looked questioningly at Tonks, who was mouthing, "Stop it!" at Snape.

The dark-haired woman glanced from Sirius to Snape and rolled her eyes. She walked around Remus, setting a covered basket on the kitchen table before whisking away the tea towel.

"Manon! You brought croissants!" exclaimed Tonks, happy for the diversion, as well as the food. She was suddenly aware that she was very hungry.

"Manon," said Snape curtly.

"Severus," acknowledged the Beauxbatons Potions mistress in a slight French accent. "Another evil scheme hatching according to plan?"

He grinned unpleasantly. "You don't know the half of it." And he took a croissant, tearing at it ravenously with his teeth while everyone watched in astonishment.

"Erm...I'm starving," said Tonks, taking another croissant and almost knocking over the basket in the process. "Breakfast at Hogwarts doesn't start for another hour."

"Doesn't it now?" remarked Remus, looking from Snape to Tonks, a slight smile on his face. To Manon he remarked, "First time I've ever seen him eat anything outside Hogwarts."

Sirius said, "Yes, Molly's cooking must seem impossibly humble to someone so accustomed to dining at the Malfoy's."

"Indeed," said Snape smoothly. "The roast Hippogriff last Saturday was particularly excellent. Lucius asked if I would like to bring back some leftovers for the dog, but I said we don't like to spoil him."

Sirius leapt to his feet, brandishing his wand, but Tonks interposed herself between Sirius and Snape. "That will do," said Tonks in a mild but firm tone reminiscent of Dumbledore.

Sirius' glare shifted between Tonks and Snape. "Why are you protecting him?"

"I'm protecting both of you," she replied in the same mild tone.

Sirius gestured aggressively at Snape with his wand. "If I find out..." he began.

"You'll do what?" interrupted Snape smoothly, brushing crumbs off his hands.

The kitchen door opened and a multitude of Order members began to enter, conjuring chairs as they sat. Snape made himself a chair in the corner, and Tonks sat as far away from him as she could get while still remaining in the kitchen. When Sirius' back was turned, shifting some chairs to make more space, Remus flashed Tonks a brief, wolfish grin, and she did her best to look puzzled as the meeting started.

"I'm glad you have seen your way clear to realise the shortcomings of these communication mirrors," Snape was saying.

"I always thought they were a bad idea."

"This from a man who thinks bathing is a bad idea," muttered Sirius under his breath. But his voice carried farther than perhaps he had intended in the quiet kitchen, and several Order members shot him sharp glances.

Dumbledore and Snape studiously ignored Sirius. "But Severus," Dumbledore was saying. "What if your wand is taken away from you? For this reason, I have not disabled the emergency beacon function of these mirrors."

Snape replied, "But if something happens to me, you can't do anything."

Dumbledore replied, "At least we will know something has happened, and you're not simply in a situation where, for instance, you're surrounded by Muggles and can't Apparate.

Snape shuddered. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

"Speaking of mishaps," queried Emmeline Vance. "What the hell is going on at the school?"

Dumbledore smiled enigmatically. "Just a little creative mayhem that helps make the Ministry's position at the school a little more complicated."

"Besides," added Minerva McGonagall, "We see a little exuberance amongst the students at the end of every school year. The stress of final exams, OWLs, NEWTs, and so forth, makes them act out a bit."

Snape scowled and said nothing. Hestia Jones said, "Don't all those practical jokes fly in the face of the more diplomatic approach you keep exhorting?"

"Why, Hestia, surely you're not implying we have anything to do with student hijinks," said Minerva, smiling.

"Then to make it credible, you'd better start punishing them more," said Snape. "If we don't, Umbridge will, and she won't be as _nice_ as I am."

"What do you _mean_ by that?" asked Sirius, his gaze alternating between the Hogwarts teachers, his voice rising in frustration. "You lot keep hinting at all these dire punishments being meted out by Umbridge. I think I have a right to know!"

Minerva shot a brief, poisonous look at Snape.

Sirius stood, waving a finger accusingly. "I SAW THAT! BLOODY FUCKING MERLIN, HE'S MY GODSON!"

"That will do, Sirius," said Dumbledore firmly.

"'THAT WILL DO?' HARRY'S BEING TORTURED BY SOME SADISTIC BUREAUCRAT, AND THAT'S ALL YOU CAN SAY?" Sirius shrieked. Everyone sat transfixed as Sirius ranted, Snape gloated, and Dumbledore and Minerva looked to each other for ideas on how to handle this.

Then Dumbledore fixed his piercing gaze on Tonks, and suddenly she knew what to do. She crossed the room and threw her arms around Sirius. He irritably tried to push her away, but she insisted, and he relented, standing in her embrace rather stiffly, a sullen expression on his face as she began to speak.

"Sirius," she began. "Umbridge tried to question Harry using Veritaserum. If she were willing to torture him, what would she need Veritaserum for?"

"Really?" gasped Molly.

"That woman is a disgrace to the Ministry," growled Mad-Eye Moody, and the other Aurors nodded their ascent.

"The Ministry is a disgrace to itself," muttered Snape.

_"Veritaserum?_ Is that supposed to make me feel better?" snapped Sirius.

"Well, of course Severus gave her fake Veritaserum." Tonks glared at Snape. "He drops these supposed 'hints' in the course of being his usual bastard self, having some fun at your expense." Her anger wasn't entirely feigned.

Neither was Snape's as he stomped across the kitchen, slamming the door with a wood-splintering crash. Moments later, there was a second, muffled thud as the front door was violently slammed. Mrs Black and the other portraits began shrieking their protests but quickly quieted down at the sight of no-one in the hallway.

With Snape gone, Sirius' anger began to abate. He seemed to shrink slightly in Tonks' arms, and she was shocked at how thin he was. And he smelled none too good, like a mixture of sweat, stale drink, and musty old furniture. He allowed Tonks to sit him back down without resisting.

In the awkward silence that followed, Dumbledore cleared his throat. "Before we adjourn, I would like to reiterate that we have to keep working at maintaining some sort of diplomatic relationship with the Ministry. I know how hard that is, but we can't afford a war on two fronts. If we take the high road in the face of Umbridge's high-handed excesses, we can only win by gaining more support at the Ministry."

"At the expense of the students," muttered Sirius miserably.

"Minerva and I will continue to ensure the safety of the students," said Dumbledore evenly.

Arthur put an arm around Sirius' shoulders. "Behind the wards at Hogwarts, under Dumbledore's watchful eye, Harry couldn't be anyplace safer," he said. "Knowing our younger children are there helps Molly and I sleep more easily."

Sirius was looking at his feet. "You're right." He raised his head to address everyone, who were now filing out of the kitchen. "Erm...I'd like to apologise for behaving like a complete madman."

"Can't say I blame you," growled Moody, and there were similar sentiments expressed about the kitchen.

ssssssssssssssssssssssssss

"A diplomatic relationship with the Ministry," snorted Snape. "Diplomacy is nothing more than lying to a pack of fools because they have something you want. And what does it accomplish, besides convincing idiots that they are anything other than the completely ignorant tossers they cannot help being?"

Tonks grinned over her cup of potion. "Just as I was beginning to wonder why Dumbledore didn't bring you along on the diplomatic missions."

He looked up from the ever-present heap of parchments on his desk and scowled at her, but she was sure she could see a twinkle of mirth in those dark eyes. "Better finish up and get out of here. I'm expecting Potter in twenty-five minutes. The longer you stay, the more likely it is he'll show up early. Trust me; that's how it works with Potter."

She drained her glass, grimaced, and shuddered. The apothecary in Diagon Alley made a much better-tasting version, but how was she to know she'd need Contraceptive Potion on this mission? "Ugh! This is the worst I've ever tasted."

"You're welcome. Now go." He cleared his desk and carefully set the Pensieve down upon it.

She stood and handed him the empty cup. "Can't you add sugar to it?"

He banished the cup to a shelf with an irritated gesture and shrugged. "You can add sugar to it if you wish."

Tonks snorted. "You might have said something before I drank it."

He grinned sardonically. "Just being my usual bastard self. Now get out of here, before you end up having to invent some excuse for being in my office for the whole of Gryffindor House."

She morphed into her student appearance while he unwarded his office door. "I could tell them the truth."

He rolled his eyes and opened his office door with a flick of his wand. "Go. Away."

"And good evening to you, too."

She received a call several hours later, well after curfew. Exhausted, she had gone to bed early, and took several sleep-muddled seconds to find her wand before she could erect a Silencing Charm around her bed and answer the call.

"There you are!" said Snape. He had a maniacal look in his eyes, his hair wild about his face. "How soon can you get down here?" he demanded, his speech faster than usual, an hysterical edge to his voice.

"Wotcher, Severus," she croaked. Then she was wide awake. "What's happened? Are you hurt?"

"Of course I'm not hurt," he snapped. "Are you a healer?"

Despite the late hour, some students were still in the Common Room. Tonks contemplated the problem of sneaking past them while edging closer to the portrait hole. At the last second, a student looked up from his book and stared straight at her. Then he grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. Tonks grinned back and slipped out through the portrait hole, grateful she was not a Ravenclaw.

Snape's dungeon office was dim and cold, but usually clean and orderly. Tonks walked in on chaos. Broken glass and dead insects crunched underfoot, and it looked as if he'd cleared an entire jar-laden shelf without magic. He'd cut his thumb and was about to put it in his mouth, fingers dripping blood and potion, but thought better of it, instead taking out his wand. Tonks vanished the potion from his hand and used a simple Healing Charm on the cut. She took his hand in both of hers and turned it over to look for more injuries, but he snatched it away and began to pace up and down, heedless of the mess underfoot.

"I'm supposed to be grateful it was THAT memory he saw. If it was one of the others, we would have had to Obliviate the little fucker," he hissed.

"He didn't!" exclaimed Tonks, aghast, staring at the Pensieve on his desk.

"He did!" retorted Snape, leaning against his desk on his newly-mended hand. Her sympathy seemed to mollify him slightly, and he recovered himself enough to vanish some of the mess on the floor.

"So...he didn't see..."

"He didn't see me groveling before the Dark Lord, or pulling up my sleeve in front of Dumbledore..."

Judging from the extent of the mess, he'd been furious for hours, but his rage now seemed to have spent itself and was resolving into a brooding misery. He righted an upended chair and sat down upon it, rubbing his left forearm absently before he began to speak.

"Potter's father was part of a gang of Gryffindor bullies who tormented Slytherin students," he began.

"You mean the Marauders? But weren't they about Remus and his lycanthropy?"

"Helping the werewolf was only an excuse, a justification for anything else they did. They thought themselves above the rest of us. I was the only student who refused to be intimidated by them, which almost got me killed."

"So...did Harry see the time you almost got eaten by Remus?"

"No, I don't bother removing that memory. He already knows about it, doesn't he? And it might be educational for him if he happened to stumble across it and see things from _my_ perspective for a change. No, he saw something else. And I don't want to talk about it." He leaned his elbows upon his desk and rested his chin on his hands.

After watching him a moment, Tonks turned her back on him and began to clear away the mess on the floor, vanishing what was irretrievably destroyed and repairing what could be salvaged.

Then he was behind her, grasping her forearms. "I didn't bring you down here to tidy up," he murmured. Warding his office door, he began to push her towards the portal that lead to his private chambers. Pausing, he hissed, "Grow up, will you?"

"What?" she retorted indignantly. "You're telling ME to...oh!" She morphed into her adult appearance. "And you don't have to drag me."

She began to walk beside him when he stopped, an odd expression on his face, a mixture of vexation and something she couldn't read. They glared at each other a moment, his eyes narrowed, her eyes widening in comprehension.

"On the other hand," she said. "I'm rather tired after getting up so early this morning." And she turned as if to leave.

"Then I'm going to have to take your wand away from you," he whispered. Disarming her deftly, he resumed dragging her across the dungeon. He was surprisingly strong for one so thin, and she was able to put up a fair fight.


	9. Chapter 9

Next day, she awoke bruised and scraped, but oddly refreshed, as though she had slept deeply despite her injuries. She winced as he continued to shake her shoulder.

"Ow! I'm awake!" "

We overslept," he said. "It's seven-thirty."

"Oh, shite!" She started to leap from the bed, but he stopped her with an outstretched hand.

"Not so fast." He whisked aside the coverlet and regarded her body critically for a moment before applying a Healing Charm here and there. He Summoned her clothes from the heap on the floor, shaking them out before tossing them onto the bed beside her. "Fortunately, Albus is in his office this morning," he told her while she was getting dressed.

Pulling on a sock, she looked up, bemused. "In his...office?"

"Where else would he be?" he retorted. "I had to tell him I was terminating the Occlumency lessons, and there was no point in forcing me to continue. And I had to explain our...situation."

She blushed. "What did he say?"

"With respect to the Occlumency, he didn't argue as much as I expected. I think he knew a lost cause when he saw it. As to _this,_ he said that as long as I didn't do anything illegal, my personal life was none of his business. And in times of war, people seek solace any way they can, etcetera." He made a wry face.

She rolled her eyes. "Nosy old man."

"You don't know the half of it. And he provided me with a Portkey that will take you straight to your bed." He held out what looked like a stick of gum wrapped in purple packaging adorned with moons and stars.

She accepted it and turned it over in her hands, puzzled. "I give up. Nice packaging, though. Is it his own brand?"

"Albus' safeguards are always sweets-related if he can manage it," he replied. "You have to chew it. That way, I don't accidentally get transported to your bed just from handling the gum."

She grinned. "No need to make Dolores more jealous than she already is."

He shuddered dramatically. "Though if she tried to make trouble for me, I'd just tell her I'd been meaning to ask staff at the Ministry if she frequents the men's toilets there as often as she does here."

Tonks raised her eyebrows and spat out the gum unchewed into her hand. "Really?"

He nodded. "How else would she have found Montague? Now get out of here." He looked pointedly at a clock. She returned the gum to her mouth, bit down, and found herself back in Gryffindor Tower, in her bed, under the covers, clothes removed and folded at her feet. An unfamiliar pressure under her hand revealed a toy stuffed snake of green terrycloth with silver button eyes nestled in bed with her. Nice touch, Albus, she thought, before throwing the snake aside, morphing into her younger appearance, and beginning another day pretending to be a student.

Transfiguration was her first class. To her surprise, she arrived on time and only slightly out of breath.

But Professor McGonagall addressed her sharply. "Miss Black, you are to proceed to the Headmistress' office at once."

Tonks looked questioningly at the teacher, who shook her head slightly. "Immediately, Miss Black."

Tonks walked down the corridor leading to Umbridge's office, her head teaming with questions and potential excuses. Surely Albus had arranged for Olympe Maxime to verify that a "Dora Black" had been attending her school? Considering that Dolores was suspicious and obsessive enough to check, she, Tonks, should have been.

A tall, elegant black boy stepped into her path, seemingly out of no-where. "Salut!" he called, smiling. "May I have a word?"

Tonks regarded him more closely and recognised him as a fifth-year Slytherin. But he wore no Inquisitorial Squad pin. He smirked as she finished scrutinising the front of his robes. "I have no such pin," he said. "But even if I did belong to that group, I think it's better as a general rule to be less obvious about where one's loyalties lie. Do you agree?"

The Head of Slytherin would certainly agree, she thought. Affecting a slightly puzzled look, she smiled back at the boy. "Excuse me. I have to go to the Headmistress' office." She walked around him to continue down the corridor.

He addressed her retreating back. "When you have been requested to do something, sometimes the best way to comply with the request is not to follow the most obvious course of action."

She stopped and turned to face him. "Who are you? The Slytherin philosopher?"

He spread his arms wide. "Why so scathing? Are we Slytherins supposed to spend every second of every day scheming and plotting? Is there a rules book which states that Slytherins can't be contemplative and thoughtful?" He looked up and down the corridor before reaching into a pocket. "Would you like a stick of gum?" He held out a small oblong purple packet adorned with moons and stars.

Tonks grinned in comprehension. Taking her hand off the wand in her pocket, she accepted the proffered gum and popped it into her mouth. Just as she felt the familiar tug behind her naval, the boy gave her a parting wave.

Moments later she stumbled against Albus Dumbledore's desk. Dumbledore looked up from a parchment. "Welcome. Have a seat." He waved a hand and a plush chair covered in bright purple velvet appeared beside her.

"Forgive the subterfuge," he continued as Tonks seated herself. "Since my little dispute with the Ministry, I have to be creative about how I invite people to my office." He pushed papers aside and folded his hands on the desktop, smiling gently. "You're needed in London. What with the Death Eaters' continuing efforts to break into the Department of Mysteries, the Order and the Ministry both feel your absence. Your assignment here is terminated. I am sorry." He slid a box of chocolates across his desk towards her.

To hide her dismay, she dithered a moment while selecting a chocolate. "The Aurory doesn't apologise for assigning its people hither and thither."

He regarded her silently for a moment. "No, I'm sure it doesn't."

She looked down to avoid his gaze and found herself staring at the box of chocolates. "Erm...these are excellent truffles, Albus," she said, helping herself to another.

"Yes. I received quite a few on my birthday. You only have to drop hints around some people. Like with the socks."

"The...socks?" The puzzlement in Tonks' voice was partly muffled by chocolate.

"For the past couple of Christmases, Molly has been bestowing me with hand-knit woolen socks in colours to match more robes than I have ever owned. Should I live another one hundred and fifty years, I will not exhaust my sock bounty. Harry must have said something, don't you think?"

Bewildered, Tonks took another truffle before pushing the box away. "I'm eating far too much chocolate these days."

Dumbledore shook his head. "Severus has asked me how I got to such a healthy old age, eating so many sweets." He leaned forwards in his chair. "Between you, me, and the fencepost, he's a very smart boy, but when it comes to sweets, he misses the point entirely."

Tonks almost choked on a truffle, hearing Snape called "boy," then struggled to disguise a blush. Severus had made a jibe about her generous hips when they were getting dressed one morning, weeks ago. Was there nothing this old man didn't know about?

Dumbledore pushed the box back towards her. "Take the box. Please. I never thought it possible, but one really can have too much chocolate. Give them away if you must." Looking more serious, he handed her another stick of gum. "This will take you to your flat in London. From there, report to Kingsley at the Ministry. I will make your excuses to Minerva and Severus." He smiled sadly at her. "The Death Eaters will make a move soon, but not here. Tom's interests lie at the Ministry."

After a day at the Ministry spent filling out forms explaining her absence--Tonks had spotted Sirius Black in north Scotland, and when she tried to arrest him, he transformed into a dog and leapt into a herd of cattle, nipping at their heels to start a stampede, and losing himself in the mêlée, she wrote with amusement--she stopped in at 12 Grimmauld Place. Sirius and Remus were sitting at the kitchen table, deep in conversation, a candle and a bottle of wine between them. A large flat box shoved to the side contained the remnants of a pizza.

"Wotcher, Remus, Sirius. This looks positively romantic."

Sirius snorted and Remus laughed. Tonks then recounted what she'd told the Ministry.

Sirius affected a puzzled look. "I thought I was in Thailand."

"No, Padfoot." Remus was affecting a scornful tone. "You're in the foothills of the Himalayas. Kingsley's positive you've thrown in with the Yeti. Remember the article last week?"

After a moment, Sirius nodded slowly. "Yes, of course. All that travelling has got me disoriented." Sirius slid out his chair. "Speaking of travelling, I was just on my way upstairs. But you must join Remus for a drink."

She looked at her watch. "Isn't it a little early for bed?" she teased.

"I'm feeding Buckbeak. Or maybe I'll try and open that locket. Or sweep up Doxy droppings in the library. Anything to avoid doing to him what he deserves now more than ever, which is to hex his bony arse back to Scotland." He stood and left the table.

Tonks sat Remus sat in awkward silence, listening to footsteps receding up the stairs. Remus was avoiding her eyes.

"I guess it's not your bony arse he's talking about," said Tonks, smiling gently at Remus.

His gaze flickered briefly to meet hers. "My arse is not so bony these days, what with all these meals of Molly's." He blushed before continuing. "Yesterday Sirius said that since 'You-Know-Who' is already taken, this bloke is 'You Know What.'"

She chuckled uneasily. Remus quickly poured a glass of wine, pushing it towards her. "Pizza's probably still warm, if you're peckish."

"No, thanks, just this." She sipped the wine. "I'm trying to reduce."

"Why?" he said. "You're perfect." And he blushed again.

"I'm glad somebody thinks so," she replied, grinning. He was so embarrassed, the poor bloke. Who ever heard of a shy werewolf?

"So...what was Sirius on about?"

"Harry talked to us today through Dolores Umbridge's fireplace," Remus said quickly, relieved at having something to talk about. "He...erm...found out something about James from Snape and wanted to ask us if it were true."

"Did it have anything to do with that memory he saw in the Pensieve?"

Remus stared at her. "He _told_ you?"

"My job has been to keep an eye on Harry," she replied evasively.

Remus sighed. "Harry's very upset."

"Well, he should be. That was a very stupid thing he did."

Remus shrugged. "Snape hasn't exactly gone out of his way to win the boy's trust."

"Snape's not exactly in a position where he can, is he?" Tonks retorted.

Remus inclined his head noncommittally and sipped his wine. Then they heard the front door open and the almost soundless tread of someone approaching who knew where all the squeaky floorboards were. Snape threw open the kitchen door. He started to enter, but stopped upon seeing Remus and Tonks at the table, a half-burned candle and bottle of wine between them.

"Thank you for coming, Severus," said Remus in a low voice.

Snape turned to Remus, his eyes narrowing. "I'm only here because I have an errand to run close by," said Snape imperiously. "Whatever you have to say, you're wasting your breath. These Occlumency lessons have been a fiasco from the start. The boy is determined to sabotage my best efforts to teach him."

Remus conjured and filled another wine glass, avoiding the Potions master's prying eyes. "Wine, Severus?"

Snape frowned. "This isn't a social visit," he hissed.

"It's elf-made wine," said Tonks mildly.

Snape's frown softened. "If you insist." Striding across the room, he snatched up the glass and retreated to his spot back by the door. "Adequate," he said, after a sip.

Remus cleared his throat. "Personally, I think it's good for Harry to see his dad in a more realistic light rather than as a paragon of heroism and virtue."

Snape cocked his head. "Is that so?" he said, starting to smirk as he leaned against the doorjamb, sipping wine.

Undeterred, Remus continued, "Yes, and he's learned his lesson. From now on, Harry would be more obedient and respectful than you have ever seen him."

"Glad he's learned something," said Snape. He pointed his wand at the bottle and tapped the rim of his glass, causing it to refill.

With a tinge of exasperation, Remus said, "Look, whatever's happened, our objectives remain the same."

To Tonks, Snape said, "This really is excellent wine. My compliments to Black."

Remus said, "Shouldn't we all be doing our utmost to prepare Harry?"

"And if I don't?" retorted Snape, smiling unpleasantly. "If I don't and we lose this war, go ahead and blame me if you wish. I'll be dead anyway."

Tonks opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it and looked at Remus, who gave her a small, pained smile. Then she looked back at Snape, who raised his eyebrows slightly, looking annoyed. She was starting to feel annoyed herself. Surely they could see that she was caught in the middle, and it wasn't her fault that she got on with everybody. With some defiance, she met Snape's eyes. I'm not blowing friendships to suit you or anybody else for that matter, she thought.

Snape drained his glass. "Lupin, that's obviously the best you can do. I must be going. Come along, Tonks."

"What?" Tonks' gaze shifted between each wizard in confusion. "Why?"

"I require your assistance," he replied curtly, and swept out of the kitchen.

"What sort of assistance does he require at this time of night?" said Remus softly, as if he were talking to himself.

There was a crack as Sirius materialised in the kitchen. "I don't know about you two, but I'm going to find out," he said, and stalked out of the kitchen on the trail of Snape.

Tonks and Remus looked at each other, simultaneously rose to their feet, and rushed after Sirius.

Snape and Sirius were standing facing each other in the front hallway. Sirius, wand pointed at Snape's face, had just said something, ending with, "Snivellus!"

Snape, hands in pockets, smirked. "Wormtail called me that recently. And you share his penchant for listening at doors. I must tell him how much you two still have in common."

Tonks walked around Snape to stand between Snape and Sirius, hands outstretched. "That will do," she said, trying and failing to emulate the calm authority of the Headmaster, but she was too angry. "Sirius, Severus has to run an errand, and whether I go with him or not is my business." She turned to the other wizard. "Snape, just stop it."

"Stop what?" Snape smirked in mock innocence, taking his hands out of his pockets, palms upturned.

Sirius pointed his wand accusingly at Snape's face. "You left that memory unattended on purpose. And Harry, like any sensible person, is suspicious of you, and being only a kid after all, he couldn't resist seeing what you were hiding from him. So you could back out of the Occlumency lessons all righteously indignant about your privacy being violated. You planned it all along. Admit it."

Snape chuckled. "Why, yes, Black. You have found me out. It was I who arranged to have the Weasley twins shove Montague into the Vanishing Cabinet several days previously, timing it just so that he would pop up in that toilet right at the start of an Occlumency lesson. Coordinating it with Umbridge's schedule for sneaking into the men's toilets was tricky, but all too simple for evil dark wizards like me." Mrs Black's portrait had woken up, and Snape raised his voice to be heard above her screams. "Thank you, Black, for acknowledging my omnipotence. Tonks, let's get out of here. I can no longer suffer the presence of such inferior beings." He turned and started for the door.

Sirius grabbed Tonks' left arm. His grip was painful. "Don't go with him," he whispered urgently. "Think of your future."

Remus leapt forwards. "Padfoot, you're hurting her," he protested.

Tonks waved her wand over Sirius' hands. He gasped and released his grip. "Sorry about that, Sirius," she said. "And it's my future after all." Pulling her arm away from Sirius' now-slack hands, she ran for the door, trusting that Remus would stop Sirius from following. She tripped over the threshold and would have fallen headlong into the street if Snape hadn't grabbed her elbow as she hurtled past. To balance himself, he grabbed the doorknob, pulling the door closed with a dust-clearing crash. For a moment they could hear the enraged shouts of Mrs Black and the answering imprecations of her son fading as the house shrank between numbers eleven and thirteen. They hopped off the front step just before it vanished completely.

"So where are we going?" she asked lightly.

"My house," he answered tersely, looking up and down the street.

"I didn't know you grew up in the same neighbourhood as Sirius. Did you know each other as boys?"

He snorted. "It's closer than Hogwarts, but not walking distance. I'll take you." He grasped her elbow and they Disapparated.

They arrived in a dingy neighbourhood of ramshackle houses that looked deserted.

"Severus! We can't go Apparating into Muggle areas!" Tonks whispered indignantly, looking around.

"No-one but me lives here anymore, so I can come and go any way I please," he retorted. "This way." He led her down a dead-end street. The house at the end appeared to be the most ramshackle of all. Weathered boards nailed in a haphazard way partly obscured a smashed front window. The chimney had collapsed, its bricks scattered about the front garden and across the half-crumpled roof, its rafters showing in spots. But as Tonks and Snape approached the house, they saw it seem to blur, and suddenly the front window was intact, curtains neatly drawn. Snape waved his wand and a puff of smoke rose from the chimney, now straight and whole. There were no bricks in the front garden as they walked across it to the house, pausing before the front door.

"I've started a fire, but I haven't been here since the summer. It's going to be cold." Snape spoke half-aloud, as if bracing himself before entering.

"Purebloods can't see anti-Muggle charms," Tonks murmured.

He opened the front door. "True. They can easily find the house when they come to this neighbourhood. What's your point?"

"Well, wouldn't you want to hide from the...wait a minute...what do you mean, 'they?' Mrs Black's portrait said your blood was as good as Malfoy's."

"Lucius wouldn't agree." He gestured towards the open door. "After you."

She entered to find herself in a tiny book-lined sitting room furnished with a couch, a chair, and a rickety table. Despite the small size of the room, a tiny fire was barely able to penetrate the gloomy chill, but Tonks crouched before it, attempting to warm her hands.

She looked sideways at Snape, who had sat down on the couch. "So...why did you get so angry when Mrs Black made that crack about your alcoholic father, if it was no more than mistaken identity?"

"Think she touched a nerve, do you? Well, you're wrong. She always mistakes me for the Death Eater who killed Regulus, and I'm sick of it. That's all."

"Sirius told me you and Regulus were friends." Snape abruptly stood and left the room, and Tonks wondered if she'd pushed him too far. But he returned moments later with a steaming teapot and two cups and sat back down on the couch. When Tonks sat beside him he handed her a cup of tea and they sat in companionable silence for several minutes as they warmed themselves.

"The less you know about certain things, the better." He wasn't looking at her and had spoken so quietly it was as if no-one else was in the room. Then he set down his cup of tea roughly, spilling some of it, and turned towards her. "Regulus and I split a bottle of Firewhisky one night and confessed to each other that we didn't want to be Death Eaters any more. We decided that we each stood a better chance on our own. Though I told him he was a fool to try and run. He didn't know Occlumency, so he couldn't do what I did, but he could have gone to Albus for protection. Idiot."

Tonks set her own teacup down and managed to crack the cup and spill the remaining tea.

Snape mended the cup and cleaned the table. "More tea?"

"No, thank you," she said, feeling more awkward than ever. After weeks of wishing that he would tell her more about himself, she was frightened by his sudden frankness. What might he tell her next? She had been more like a teenager than she realised, living only for the present with no regard for the past. It was as if she'd forgotten he'd been a Death Eater.

"Listen, I'm sorry..."

"No, you're not," he interrupted, eyes glinting. "Nor should you be. You can ask anything you like. Whether or not I answer is my choice."

"But I didn't mean to remind you of..."

"I never forget I was a Death Eater. Which reminds me." He reached into a pocket and removed some small wooden cubes that looked like dice from an ancient board game before he unshrunk them, revealing rat traps.

"You...have a rodent problem, Severus?" she said, puzzled. He was a strange man, but never whimsical.

"I'm going to have a rodent problem," he replied cryptically.

"There are charms that work better than those Muggle traps. And you don't need my help for this, Severus."

"These traps are appropriate for this particular _species_. And yes, you're right that I don't need your help. But did you see the look on your cousin's face when you left with me right under his nose?" He smirked. "The werewolf said that if I came over to talk with him, Black would stay out of my way. But there he was, wand right in my face."

She sighed. "It's hard on him, being stuck in the house all these months. He may as well have never left Azkaban."

"I'm glad we agree."

She glared at him. "Look, you're going to have to face the fact that Sirius and Remus are friends of mine."

"And you're going to have to face the fact that they are _not_ friends of mine," he retorted coldly, standing. "And I'd rather you didn't know where this place is. So I'm going to Apparate you back, rather than giving you coordinates."

She remained seated. "But you could use my help with baiting the traps," she said mildly.

He paused on his way to the front door. "I beg your pardon?"

"The traps," she repeated, and grinned. "You want something that will tempt him that also is sticky and will stay on the traps. Toffee would work, I think. Sirius told me he's mad for sweets."

He continued to scowl at her a moment, but then his brow smoothed. "Very well," he said silkily, and pointed his wand at one of the book-covered walls. It opened to reveal a hidden staircase. "It's been a long day."

She rose and took his arm. Together they went up the stairs. The door closed behind them. Dust re-settled on the bookshelves as if they had not been disturbed in years.


	10. Chapter 10

Someone knocked on his office door. "Come in," he said, sounding as surly and unwelcoming as possible, to be on the safe side.

The Ferret Boy entered. Severus couldn't help but think of him that way since he'd switched the allegiances of half his house to Dolores Umbridge, a betrayal of the Slytherin Head of House never before seen, as far as he knew. When he was retiring, Horace had told him that Slytherins stood proudly apart from the rest of the school and their loyalties always lay with their Head of House, even if the Headmaster was a Slytherin.

At the same time, Severus thought of the power Umbridge offered these kids when she gave them the Inquisitorial Squad pin. He asked himself if he could have resisted the temptation of such an offer of power when he was a teenager and decided he didn't like the answer.

"Yes, Draco?" he said in a friendlier tone, his face and voice not betraying any trace of the contempt he was feeling.

"The Headmistress needs you right away, sir," said Draco, smirking.

_He looks awfully pleased,_ thought Severus. Draco must have done something more substantial to curry favour with Umbridge than just fetch Severus to help with a plumbing problem.

When they arrived at Umbridge's office, Severus was not surprised to see various Gryffindor students, including Potter, struggling to escape from Inquisitorial Squad members. The confrontations between the Squad and the Gryffindors had been increasingly brazen since the Montague episode, and he had been wondering how long it would be before Umbridge got directly involved. "You wanted to see me, Headmistress?" he asked.

"Ah, Professor Snape," said Umbridge, looking every bit the toad that had swallowed a particularly juicy fly. "Yes, I would like another bottle of Veritaserum, as quick as you can, please."

"You took my last bottle to interrogate Potter," he lied silkily. The bottle that Tonks had filled with water from the tap probably contained more traces of Basilisk than anything resembling Veritaserum, he thought, and assumed a haughty expression to forestall any possibility of a smirk. "Surely you did not use it all? I told you that three drops would be sufficient."

She flushed. "You can make some more, can't you?"

Her amphibian rage was as hilarious as it was predictable, and he sneered to prevent himself from laughing in her face. "Certainly. It takes a full moon-cycle to mature, so I should have it ready for you in around a month."

"A month?" she squawked. "A month? But I need it this evening, Snape! I have just found Potter using my fire to communicate with a person or persons unknown!"

"Really?" he said, looking round at Potter. "Well, it doesn't surprise me. Potter has never shown much inclination to follow school rules."

Instead of trying to avoid his gaze like he usually did, the boy was staring at him urgently. What's this? An image of Sirius Black being tortured? Not an unpleasant sight, but finding it in Potter's mind was rather unexpected.

"I wish to interrogate him," said Umbridge. Severus turned away from Potter to look into the eyes of the woman before him. She was thinking she could fetch Veritaserum from the Ministry, but they would want a court order before they would let her perform a Veritaserum interrogation. So she was dependant on Severus' goodwill.

Fortunately, he didn't have any. "I wish you to provide me with a potion that will force him to tell me the truth!" hissed Umbridge in growing desperation, appearing about as threatening as those revolting kittens on the decorative plates behind her. Severus let more of the contempt he was feeling show on his face. The Dark Lord would ask him to do something, and if he didn't, his refusal would be the last thing he ever did. Dumbledore preferred to use persuasion rather than coercion, but in the end, he was as accomplished as the Dark Lord at getting his way.

Umbridge, however, was starting to realise that she had no real authority and was sounding as whiny and petulant as a homesick first-year with detention. The time for trying to placate her with fake Veritaserum was past.

Instead, it was time to show her and those Inquisitorial Squad ingrates who really held the reins of power at this school. "I have already told you that I have no further stocks of Veritaserum. Unless you wish to poison Potter--and I assure you I would have the greatest sympathy with you if you did--I cannot help you. The only trouble is that most venoms act too fast to give the victim much time for truth-telling."

Severus looked away from Potter, who had been mentally screaming over and over that the Dark Lord was holding Black in the Department of Mysteries. Either the boy was hallucinating, or the Dark Lord was sending him a false image to try and lure him off the safety of school grounds. Albus would want Severus to contact Black and ensure that he was safe and unharmed at 12 Grimmauld Place before he did anything else.

But first he would have to get out of this room. Severus ground his teeth in frustration. If there was anything more thankless than having to contact Sirius Black, it was anticipating contacting Sirius Black. Instead of getting it over and done with, he would have to stand there, pretending to be thinking about something else, wondering what sort of humiliating insult the man spent his loads of free time devising for whenever they had to meet. And he, Severus, may be able to hold his own against the withering glares of the entire Wizangamot, but they didn't know him when he was a child.

"You are on probation!" shrieked Umbridge.

Severus raised his eyebrows slightly, taking in the clock on the wall. If Umbridge had moved on to punishments, she probably was almost finished with him. And she'd better be--if she didn't throw him out of her office inside of one minute, he would have to try and expedite his expulsion. He began to wrack his brains for the right sort of insult, but so many sprang to mind, it was hard to choose amongst them. What could he say that would at once make her throw him out immediately, but not get him sacked? The Dark Lord would be very angry if he lost his spy at Hogwarts.

Now Umbridge was swelling up like she was about to give birth to tadpoles. "You are being deliberately unhelpful! I expected better, Lucius Malfoy always speaks most highly of you! Now get out of my office!"

He graced her with a bow before turning to leave. When he told Lucius about this, he would suggest a toast, and maybe Lucius would get out his best scotch. Or at least the best he would stoop to share with a half-blood.

"He's got Padfoot!" shouted Potter. "He's got Padfoot in the place where it's hidden!"

Suppressing a sigh, Severus took his hand off the door handle.

"Padfoot?" cried Umbridge in excitement. "What is Padfoot? Where what is hidden? What does he mean, Snape?"

Snape looked at Potter, also taking in the rest of the room. Any sign, any gesture, any word obvious enough for Potter would be obvious to everyone else as well. Potter was just going to have to trust him. "I have no idea," said Severus. "Potter, when I want nonsense shouted at me I shall give you a Babbling Beverage. And Crabbe, loosen your hold a little. If Longbottom suffocates it will mean a lot of tedious paperwork and I am afraid I shall have to mention it on your reference if ever you apply for a job."

He had been inching towards the door as he spoke. Once it was safely closed behind him, he broke into an all-out run, sprinting all the way to the nearest teacher's office. "Make way, Filius," he barked at the astonished Charms teacher as he practically dove into the diminutive man's fireplace.

At the other end, he sprawled on the carpet in front of his own fire.

"What an unnecessarily undignified entrance," commented Phineas Nigellus from his dungeon portrait by the fire. "And probably none too good for your back."

"I'll mind my own back, Phineas," retorted Snape coolly, ignoring the bolts of pain lancinating up his spine as he rose from the carpet. "Tell Albus I need to speak with him right away."

He then sent a Patronus to 12 Grimmauld Place.

--Are you in, Black?

--Where else would I be?

--Never mind. No matter what happens, remember it is your duty to stay right where you are.

--What's happening?

--Probably nothing. But if anything does happened, I'm sure you'll be informed. Eventually.

In reply, the other man's Patronus attempted to make him run so that it could give him chase. But he stood his ground and eventually it settled for snapping at him before vanishing.

Phineas re-appeared in his dungeon portrait. "The Headmaster isn't here. He usually isn't, you know. It's dreadfully dull without him, I must say."

"I regret that I am not more entertaining," retorted Severus snidely. "How do I reach him?"

"You know you can't when he's travelling. But he's expected at my old house, and several of the others have already arrived there. Why not contact them?"

Severus traced his lips with a finger thoughtfully. "First, I think I should see what Potter is up to."

"I was just getting to that," said Phineas waspishly. "Hermione Granger has convinced Dolores Umbridge to accompany her and Harry Potter alone into the Forbidden Forest. And a roomful of Slytherin students couldn't prevent it." He shook his head dolefully. "It's a sad day for Slytherin when a handful of Gryffindor students prove themselves better at deception."

"When Umbridge is gone, I plan on explaining to them about the consequences of throwing their allegiances behind the wrong person," Severus replied absently. Should he follow Potter into the Forest or await his return? "Speaking of allegiances, I'd wager the boy doesn't trust me."

No-one answered, as Phineas was once again absent from his portrait. Severus sat in his chair a moment, drumming his fingers on the armrests, before springing to his feet to pace before the fire.

Phineas re-appeared in his portrait. "I regret to inform you of a further disgrace to Slytherin," he intoned portentously. "The remaining Gryffindor students who were being held in the pretender's office have made good their escape and are making their way to the Forest."

Severus sighed and flung out another Patronus. "That's it, then. They're on another heroic quest."

"The incompetence of these current Slytherin students doesn't reflect well on our house, Severus."

"Well, if this lot is going to end up serving the Dark Lord, it's just as well they'll be bad at it, I daresay."

"Your attitude doesn't exactly fill me with hope for the future."

Just then, Tonks' reply to his message arrived.

--We're going to the Ministry, Sirius included. There's no stopping him.

--Did you try _Stupefy?_ Albus is expected, and someone has to be there to brief him.

The reply did not come from Tonks.

--Make up your mind, Snape. I thought you would be thrilled by the prospect of my capture by the Ministry. Or does the absence of Dementors from Azkaban take all the fun out of it for you?

Another message from Tonks overlapped the last.

--If there are Death Eaters at the Ministry, we need all the help we can get. Sirius has left a message for Albus with Kreacher.

--I don't think the House-Elf can be trusted.

--Look who's talking about trust, ha ha.

--Your godson is putting you into danger because he wouldn't trust me.

--He's not risking _your_ life, is he? It's not as if _you're_ going to be here. After all, why risk your life in an honest duel when you can skulk around, pretending to risk your life? I'm sure telling everybody what they want to hear is oh so hazardous.

--Why am I not the slightest bit surprised that the subtleties of my position are lost on you, Black?

--On second thought, come join us. I won't blow your cover. I'll treat you just like any other Death Eater, I promise.

--To maintain my cover, I would have to kill you, Black. What an unfortunate loss that would be.

Several minutes went by, but Severus received no more messages, until...

--Severus? Are you alone?

--Yes. Are you, Tonks?

--Everybody is outside waiting for me. I just wanted to say, I'd like to see you after we throw these tossers into Azkaban. Shouldn't take long.

--Don't underestimate your enemy. Most of them may be complete idiots, but they all learned how to duel from the Dark Lord.

--I learnt duelling from Mad-Eye, if it's any consolation.

Severus closed his eyes. The memory was still as vivid as if it were in a Pensieve. Auror Moody had collapsed to his knees in shock, blood flowing copiously from his ruined nose while Evan Rosier stood over him smirking in triumph. Evan turned to grin at Severus and suddenly they were both looking down at a hole in Evan's chest you could put a bludger through.

--It is a consolation. The man is every bit as mental as the Dark Lord.

--I'll send you a message when we're finished.

--I'll bring a bottle of elf-made wine. And Tonks? If you get yourself killed, I'll be very angry.

Severus left his quarters and ran upstairs. "Are the students back from the Forest yet?" he asked a portrait near the front door.

The portrait's occupant, an imperious young woman in a red dress, paused in brushing her long chestnut hair and narrowed her eyes at him. "What will you do to them if they're not?"

He swore under his breath and descended back to the dungeons to fetch his travelling cloak before sweeping from his chambers. A short distance down the corridor, just shy of the Potions classroom, a dusty, unlit hallway ended at a narrow metal door. Generations of curious students who ventured down this corridor squinted at the faded inscription on the door: "Accessway to main sewage trunk. All who enter are advised to wear rubber boots and a Bubblehead Charm." Wrinkling their noses, they would retreat back to the main corridor.

No students, not even the Marauders, realised that this door was nothing more than an exit, a shortcut to the outside from the castle's lower levels. The dungeons were at ground level here and Severus stepped into the damp evening air through a thorny hedge that obligingly parted before meshing back together behind him into an impenetrable thicket.

Severus' rapid pace belied his reluctance. Between the aggressive mood of the centaurs and whatever big creature Hagrid was hiding, the Forbidden Forest was the last place Severus wanted to visit these days, and having to search there for wayward students went beyond mere inconvenience. And at the end of it all, if things went the way they usually did, Potter and Granger would be hailed as heroes, unscathed except for a few rakish scratches they could show off in the Gryffindor Common Room, while he'd likely be slinking back to the castle in torn, muddy robes and an arrow in his...what _was_ that noise?

An enormous crashing resounded from the Forest and Severus could see large trees flailing about as something large jostled them. As he drew nearer, he could hear the angry shouts of centaurs and a woman screaming.

"Bloody fucking Merlin," he muttered, breaking into a run.

Though he owned no Invisibility Cloak, Severus' years of spying had taught him how to sneak about without being noticed. He slipped through the Forest undetected by any of its multitudinous four-legged, six-legged, eight-legged, or ten-legged inhabitants.

He cautiously approached the general area where the noise had been coming from. When he happened upon a clearing, he hunkered down behind a bush to peer through it, and suppressed a snort.

The centaurs had tied Dolores Umbridge to a tree and were arguing vociferously amongst themselves. After a few minutes of painstaking eavesdropping, he was able to discern that they couldn't agree on how they were going to kill her. They seemed to have divided themselves into two camps. Some were arguing for expediency, as Dumbledore was sure to show up and rescue her. Others wanted a slow and grisly death that would send a strong message to the presumptuous and disrespectful humans. This latter group expounded with such impressive eloquence on the subject of lingering agonies and horrifying torments that Severus tore himself away with some reluctance to continue his search.

He covered that part of the Forest that realistically, or even unrealistically, could be penetrated by teenagers on foot, but found no sign of any humans, just numerous large trees snapped like twigs and splashes of blood that was not human. He followed a trail of broken trees for a few miles, thinking that perhaps the creature that broke the trees had gathered up and carried off all the students, but that idea made less sense with every step he took. Other than a few trampled clearings, there was only one swath of destruction, suggesting to him that there was only one giant creature. Surely it couldn't have borne off all six students without leaving a trace, especially since four of them definitely had their wands and entered the Forest a fair interval after the first two.

He stopped in his tracks. A large oak lay directly across the path, numerous Bowtruckles skittering up and down the freshly-scarred trunk in agitation. Above and behind him, in the trees that were not broken, Acromantula were beginning to stalk him in increasing numbers. They were keeping a respectful distance, knowing him from his venom-gathering expeditions, but they would become bolder the farther he went. He looked about but did not have to look up. The twilight was casting many long-legged shadows on the ground. The trees were darkening and drooping under the weight of many eight-legged shapes. Time to turn for home.

Back at the castle, he found an uproar in the Entrance Hall. In the centre of the hubbub was Albus Dumbledore, greeting the students as if he were an old friend returning from a holiday abroad.

Dumbledore caught his eye, but quickly looked away. "Professor Snape," he said, beckoning him closer but keeping his gaze on the students milling about him. "The Ministry has seen fit to restore me to my position here." He spoke resoundingly and a cheer went up from all the students except for a few battered-looking Slytherins loitering by a wall, their arms folded, their expressions stony.

"I need to inform Dolores Umbridge," Albus continued. He addressed the unhappy Slytherins. "Where is she?"

"Being rendered limb from limb by the centaurs, I should hope," said Severus, glaring at his Slytherins, who could not meet his gaze. The other students laughed, and Severus turned to Albus, smirking slightly.

Then Albus, still smiling a gentle welcome, threw an arm around Severus' shoulders in a matey sort of way. But his grip on the younger man's shoulders was painful. He looked sharply at the Headmaster and nearly reeled at the combination of shock, anger, grief, remorse, and a strange wildness, of a sort common to much younger men, in the old man's eyes.

"I need to have a word with Professor Snape," said Albus, and lead him into a small room off the Entrance Hall. Scant moments later, students watched, puzzled, as Dumbledore emerged from the small room alone. Upon his arrival, Severus spat the gum on the floor of the lobby at St. Mungo's and Vanished it with a wave of his wand before approaching the WelcomeWitch.


	11. Chapter 11

The WelcomeWitch, watching him spit the gum Portkey on the floor, said with an expression of distaste, "We do have bins, you know..." Her voice trailed away at the expression on his face as he Vanished the gum and came closer. Her eyes flickered down to a register on the desk. Touching it with her wand, she asked, "What was that name again?"

"Nymphadora Tonks," he enunciated with the sarcastic clarity of extreme impatience.

The register on the witch's desk flipped open. "How do you spell that, sir?" she asked timorously.

"T-O-N-K-S."

The witch smiled weakly. Then a line in the register glowed, and she sighed audibly. "Spell Damage," she said, closing the book with evident relief. She cast a spell, aiming her wand at the floor. "Just follow the..."

"I know, I know," he muttered, following the silent glowing arrows.

It was early dawn and the corridor lights had not yet been adjusted to daybright levels. Even so, he cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself as soon as he was out of sight of the WelcomeWitch.

The arrows stopped outside a room where he heard someone gasp in pain. The door was slightly ajar, and he peered through the gap.

A mediwitch was casting a spell to raise the head of the bed as Severus terminated the spell on himself and entered the room as silent as an assassin.

"Stop!" called Tonks faintly, wincing as her waist bent to raise her upper body.

The mediwitch looked up at Severus without curiosity. To Tonks, she said, "It will be easier for you to drink your potion if your head is elevated."

"That's true," said Severus.

Tonks eyes widened when she saw him. She sat half-inclined, her hair long and black spilling about her, but not hiding the dark bruises on her pale skin.

The mediwitch poured into a cup from a bottle of Skele-Gro on the side table. "The faster you drink it, the faster it works, and you will be in pain for less time. You need to drink the entire bottle."

"I know!" said Tonks and Severus together. The mediwitch rolled her eyes.

"Yes, I'm sure you do. We get a lot of experts on this floor. Too smart by half, the lot of you."

She swept from the room. Tonks raised the glass in a mock-toast and drained it, shuddering at the taste. Severus rushed to her side, grabbed the bottle and refilled the cup to the brim.

"Sadist," she muttered.

"What's your point?" he retorted, and stood next to her, refilling her glass as she continued to drink until the bottle was drained. Then she turned greenish, and he grasped one of her wrists and pressed with two fingers on either side of the tendons just above the hand until her queasiness subsided. He fetched a chair to sit by her side.

"Which bones did they remove?"

She looked down at her side. "Let's see, I think I can...yes!" She lifted the gown up to reveal a nightmare of massive, blue-black bruises and half-healed scars. "They had to take out some of the ribs on this side. Bellatrix hit me with a Bone-Shattering Hex, and then I fell down some stairs. Glad I wasn't conscious for that part. Oh, and why would they give me Blood-Replenishing Potion? I never heard of broken bones causing blood loss."

Keeping his voice carefully neutral, Severus replied, "The Bone-Shattering Hex was designed to turn the victim's bones into shrapnel, piercing the flesh in all directions."

If it were possible, she turned even paler and let the gown drop, concealing the devastation of her injured side. She forced a grin. "How was your night? You look exhausted."

He slumped forwards in the chair, hands on his knees, greasy hair covering his face. "There was...a fatality."

"Who?" Her mouth was suddenly dry.

He spoke only after several seconds, quietly as if he couldn't bear the taste of the name in his mouth. "Black."

She stared at him but he kept looking at the floor, avoiding her eyes. "How?" she whispered.

"Lupin told Albus that Bellatrix attacked him right after she hexed you."

Tonks' face crumpled, but then she hissed in pain, her grief interrupted by newly-forming ribs asserting themselves. Severus conjured a pillow and held it against her side like a splint. Tonks clutched Severus and the pillow to herself and sobbed.

Over her shoulder, Severus stared at the wall, face expressionless.

Presently, Tonks' sobs subsided, and she calmed herself with a few breaths as deep as she could manage. Severus helped her to lean back on the mattress by pressing against her side with the pillow he'd conjured. A few more tears ran down her face.

"If I hadn't been hurt, I might have..."

"There's no point in second-guessing yourself," he interrupted.

Her face twisted. "Ow!"

He leaned forwards and resumed pressing against the pillow along her side.

"Thanks," she said. He found a tissue and she dabbed her eyes. She glanced at him. "Can you try not to look so angry?"

"I'm not angry," he lied. In truth, Severus was very angry. It was absurd, harbouring resentment towards a dead man. Already he resented more dead people than his rational mind could accept, and here was one more.

The door opened and a tall stocky woman with iron-grey hair in Healer robes entered. Severus glared at her wearily, but she merely nodded in approval as she approached.

"Someone who knows something about newly-forming bones," she said, gesturing at the pillow Severus was still pressing against Tonks' side. She smiled at Tonks. "You can do that for yourself, if you don't have a visitor to do it for you."

Severus was adjusting his grip on the pillow and didn't see the Healer take out her wand and perform a diagnostic charm. Severus happened to glance up, and stepped to the side, but he was too late. He felt a slight warmth as the charm went through his body. Tonks looked at him questioningly and he made a show of stretching his arms and shaking out his fingers before stepping back to resume his pressure on the pillow, silently cursing his carelessness.

"The worst is over, I think. Everything is healing nicely and there's no sign of infection. Before you leave us I'll write you a prescription for some dittany to clear up the scarring." The Healer was looking at Severus, a peculiar expression on her face. Severus avoided her eyes.

The door opened and Remus entered. His eyes widened when he saw Severus. "Did you...?" Remus glanced sideways at the Healer.

"I told her what happened," retorted Severus.

Remus frowned. "Was that wise?"

"I can see how much you wanted to tell her," sneered Severus. "And then you could share your grief together."

"I can see how much you wish you could have seen Bellatrix do it," retorted Remus, glaring.

"STOP it, both of you," Tonks burst out. "Remus, I can't _believe_ you said that. Severus, you need to grow up."

The sneer faded from Severus' face. Expressionless, he looked from Tonks to Remus before he swept from the room.

"I shouldn't have said that," muttered Tonks, pressing the pillow to her side and wincing.

"How can you stand it," said Remus, still fuming. "Tip-toeing around that man's massive ego and all its attendant insecurities."

"Don't, Remus. Just don't." Her voice broke, tears running down her face. He sat on the bed. "Ow! Mind the ribs," she murmured through her tears.

He half-knelt on the bed, one foot on the floor, and pressed the pillow against her side as he had seen Severus doing. As she sobbed against his shoulder, he felt his anger at Severus vanishing along with the last vestiges of his composure, and soon, his body twisted at an awkward angle on the side of that narrow bed, he felt his own tears flowing silently into the shoulder of her ugly hospital gown.

Discreet from years of practice, the Healer glided across the floor and left the room, closing the door with an almost inaudible snick. For such a nice girl, this patient had some unlikely friends. Of the only two she'd met who weren't Aurors, the werewolf was the nicer.

And what had happened to that first bloke, the one whose hostility was so palpable it nearly drove her from the room? That he'd had at least half the bones in his body re-grown was extraordinary enough. But the degenerative changes in his spine so characteristic of repeated subjection to the Cruciatus Curse was not the sort of diagnostic result she expected to find in someone who was not a permanent patient. The handful of people who had survived such injuries usually arrived at the hospital and were never to leave.

The object of her scrutiny had just reached the bottom of the stairwell opening into the main lobby. Seeing the crowds of people arriving for morning appointments he decided to Apparate, and soon had the castle within sight, striding up to it at a furious pace.

Then his left forearm burned so fiercely he staggered and nearly fell. He leaned against a tree for a few minutes, composing himself, before walking back to where he could Apparate.

_"Crucio!"_ said a familiar voice, and he dropped to the ground, trying not to scream.

But the torture ended a lot sooner than he expected.

"Bella!" said a cold voice sharply. "I did not tell you to punish him when he arrived."

"But surely you would want me to, Master?" Bellatrix protested, falling to her knees in suppliant dismay. "You were saying he was sipping tea in his dungeon while we fought..."

"That's between him and me," interrupted Voldemort. "Leave us!"

Somehow she continued to cower while rising to her feet and leaving the room at a half-run.

At the sound of a solid metal door closing with an air-sucking thunk, Severus opened his eyes to find himself staring at a pair of shoe-clad feet and the bony ankles at the bottom of two skeletally-thin, pale and blotchy legs. He tried to smile but managed only a thin grimace as he accepted the hand being offered to him. He tried, and failed, to stop himself from moaning in pain as he was pulled to his feet.

With his other hand, Voldemort conjured a chair and lowered Severus into it. "After we win this war, you will have your choice of Healers to sort out your back," said Voldemort. "A crippled Potions master is of no use to me."

"My Lord is merciful..."

"No doubt you have already heard the old fool's account of the battle?"

"I heard enough to know that it didn't go well for our side," Severus replied from between clenched teeth. His spine a pillar of agony, he gripped the arms of the chair, using the strength of his forearms and all the willpower he could muster to keep himself upright.

Voldemort watched him silently a moment. "I'm not torturing you for information." He smiled hideously. "At least, not today. _Wormtail!"_

"Yes, my Lord?" The hunched figure of the former Marauder appeared as if from nowhere.

"Fetch the Dalwhinnie."

"Yes, my Lord."

Moments later he reappeared with a glass of amber liquid. As Severus was unable to release the arms of the chair, Voldemort made Wormtail lift the glass to Severus' lips. After about half a glass Severus was able to take one hand off the arm of the chair and hold the glass for himself.

"Would you like more of the pomegranate juice, my Lord?"

The Dark Lord turned his crimson glare towards Wormtail. "Did I _ask_ for more pomegranate juice?"

Wormtail cringed. "Forgive my presumption, my Lord."

"Leave us, Wormtail." He waved a hand dismissively, preoccupied with watching Severus closely. "Better?"

"Yes, my Lord," Severus answered honestly as he drained the glass.

"Ever since I first enjoyed single-malt scotch, I have found it hard to believe that Muggles invented it," continued the Dark Lord in a conversational tone. "Surely a substance with such extraordinary properties must have been developed by a wizard, no?"

Severus shrugged. "I think it's possible that Muggles stumbled across a few great things by accident, my Lord."

Voldemort laughed. "If you said that in front of the others, I'd have to punish you."

"I know, my Lord." He flexed his shoulders against the back of the chair as the Dark Lord laughed again. There was still a considerable amount of pain, but at least he'd be able to walk out of there. He sat up straighter and looked the Dark Lord in the eye. "You understand, my Lord," Severus began smoothly, "that I couldn't fight with you, side-by-side, in the Ministry, and continue in my role at the school."

Voldemort waved a hand dismissively. "That is patently obvious. _Wormtail!_ Where does he get to?" He looked under his chair.

"Crawling about with the other vermin, no doubt," muttered Severus.

The Dark Lord regarded him with those penetrating red eyes. "I could have used a Potions master at my side during my rebirth," he said mildly. "Someone who could have made the potion properly. Not that I regret no longer resembling my worthless Muggle father, but my health would have been better."

Severus gulped. "I wasn't questioning his loyalty..."

The door opened and Peter Pettigrew scurried in. The Dark Lord shook his head at Severus. "Don't misunderstand me. Question anyone's loyalty. If you have doubts about anybody, come to me first." To Wormtail, he said, "Refill his glass." He turned back to Severus, resuming his more conversational tone. "Like I was saying, if my new body was stronger, I'd be able to enjoy a glass of whisky with you, for instance."

Cringing at the Dark Lord's words, Wormtail rushed to the sideboard, almost knocking the bottle over in his haste, and refilled Severus' glass with shaking hands. Indeed, his entire body was shaking as he turned towards the Dark Lord. "My Lord...I am sorry I could not do any better..."

"No matter. If we spend too much time resenting the events of the past, we miss opportunities in the present. Better, Severus?"

"Yes, my Lord." Severus sipped more whisky gratefully. A relaxed warmth had replaced most of the pain in his back. He shifted in the chair, adopting a more relaxed posture. "To be honest, my Lord, I expected you to be much angrier."

The red eyes glowed. "I am angry, Severus. Very angry. But what would I do?" He turned his hands palms up. "Fly into a rage and kill all of you? I would be playing right into the old fool's hands."

Severus shook his head. "He knows you are smarter than that, my Lord." He leaned back in his chair and loosened his collar. The warmth from the whisky was making him feel a little flushed.

If it were possible, the Dark Lord's reptilian face looked almost thoughtful. "Yes, he knows me better than anyone. In that way, he is almost a worthy adversary."

Feeling emboldened by the whisky and the Dark Lord's relative solicitude, Severus leaned forwards in his chair and said, "My Lord, maybe I can devise a potion that would make it possible for you to drink something stronger than pomegranate juice." He spread out his hands. "All you have to do is ask."

The Dark Lord smiled and nodded. "I did think of that. You are a talented man." He smirked at him. "Very talented."

Severus looked down at the glass of whisky in his hand.

Nothing weakened Occlumentic shields like too much alcohol.

Severus looked up from the bottom of his empty glass to the depths of those penetrating red eyes.

The Dark Lord laughed. "If I doubted any other man as much as I've doubted you, I'd have killed him years ago. But you amuse me, Severus. And you're so extraordinarily capable. You've assisted me greatly over the years." His red eyes sparkled merrily. "Whether you wanted to or not."

Severus swallowed a sick feeling in the back of his throat and smiled back. "Then I will just have to work harder at winning your trust, my Lord." He raised himself out of the chair to stand on slightly wobbly legs. "I must get back to the school. Some of my students have parents in Azkaban and are no doubt distraught."

"Of course. Give my regards to the old fool. Incidentally, Severus, you do know that Bella dispatched an old adversary of yours? I'm surprised you haven't mentioned it."

"I would have thanked Bella if she hadn't hexed me," replied Severus, the petulance in his voice not entirely feigned. "And I am encouraged to find you only slightly discouraged after this...setback, my Lord."

The Dark Lord shrugged. "We have lost a battle, my boy, not the war." He gestured at the door to his sanctum and it opened. When he turned back to Severus, the smirk had disappeared from his serpentine face and his red eyes were glowing fiercely. "Severus, if you disappoint me, I shall be very angry indeed. Now go see to the children."

"I won't disappoint you, my Lord," replied Severus automatically.

When he arrived at the school, Blaise was waiting for him. "They want to kill Potter, sir. I already told them it's not in their best interest. Is your back bothering you, sir?"

Severus stopped abruptly in the corridor. Blaise had been following and almost crashed into him from behind.

"Why?"

"You're limping."

Severus frowned and looked about. "Mind what you say in the corridors," he hissed.

Blaise shrugged. "Loads of middle-aged men have sore backs, sir."

Severus snorted. "Who are you calling middle-aged? I was the youngest teacher they'd hired in..."

"How long ago was that, sir?"

"Any more cheek from you, and I'll have to take points from Slytherin," retorted Severus, and he pulled himself straighter before resuming his pace towards the Slytherin common room. He paused before the door. "Well?"

Blaise nodded and smiled. "Fine, sir. Just a little slower than usual."

Severus gave him a brief, jerky nod in return and entered the Slytherin common room, his tread soundless and his back straight.

"I don't care. I'll keep on saying it: Potter's dead," Draco was speaking vehemently to many scowling faces, who were nodding in agreement. Severus paused to draw a Silencing Charm around the group.

"Then you would also be dead," he said silkily, approaching Draco from behind. "Assuming you were not thwarted in your plans by your insistence on discussing them in public places."

"Sir, this is hardly a public..."

"What if I were a spy from Dumbledore who walked in here and stumbled upon your little group hatching its nefarious plans openly in the middle of this room, without any safeguards?"

Everyone except Draco looked sheepish. Draco said, "Sir, it's not our fault if we were only following orders of the Headmistr..."

_"Only following orders?_ Have you any idea how many monumental acts of stupidity have been justified by those words?"

Draco protested, "Sir my father has found it highly useful to..."

"Lucius Malfoy's favourite expression is, 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.' In that sense, currying favour with the Minister for Magic is prudent and has proved to be an effective tactic." He looked from student to student, sparing none from his venomous scrutiny. "On the other hand, turning your backs on your Head of House for the sake of a Ministry stooge accomplishes nothing other than the betrayal of an allay and has left you vulnerable to exploitation by someone who advocates the torture of Death Eaters in custody."

Several gasps could be heard around the room. "They wouldn't dare," said Draco confidently. But his fair complexion was whiter than usual.

Severus continued remorselessly, "If you hadn't been so blindly ambitious, ignoring common sense in favour of slavish devotion to that woman, some of you may have even gotten into this DA and learnt something about duelling, for instance."

"That's pretty unlikely, sir."

"Perhaps." Severus conceded with a shrug. "It was more likely that you would grovel before a Ministry that has an agenda to consolidate its own power, a Ministry that wants all witches and wizards to be helpless so that they are dependant upon its _Aurors,"_ he spat out this last word, "for assistance in defending their families."

He glared in turn at each of them. They were slumped about the squashy furniture in various positions of sullen teenage defiance. None dared look at him.

Except Draco. "You could have started a duelling club for _us,_ sir. Dad says the Dark Lord trained you himself."

"You of all people know I have no time for extracurricular activities," snapped Severus. Internally he winced. How weak an explanation was that? Better insult them some more, he thought, before they think of that, too. "You are all just as helpless as the Ministry wants you to be," he spat, and turned and left the room in a swirl of black robes.

Draco's words stung more than he cared to admit. Albus' excuses for not letting him start a duelling club were similar to those he'd made all those times when he didn't give him the Defense Against the Dark Arts position.

As he strode down the corridor to his quarters, the impact of his heels on the stone floor was sending fresh bolts of pain up his spine. In his bedroom, after trying, and failing, to remove his shoes by hand, he spelled them off and crawled under the covers. Not bothering to remove the rest of his clothes, he was asleep in seconds.

A few days later, there was a timid knock at his office door. He had been preparing the end-of-year reports for all the students in Slytherin, and was nearly finished, tossing another parchment on the towering pile beside his desk. Severus threw his quill down on the desk in irritation.

"Come in," he snapped, unwarding the door with an irritated flick of his hand.

The heavy door swung open, revealing Tonks in her Auror robes.

"Are you alone?" said Severus coldly.

She rolled her eyes. "Really, Severus. Who would I be with?" She crossed the room to sit on his desk after she made space for herself by levitating a stack of parchments to the floor.

"Those don't belong... never mind." Severus rubbed his eyes wearily. "You have made a rapid recovery."

She shifted a little stiffly on his desk. "I'm still a bit sore. But I was going to leave today if I had to crawl. I couldn't take any more of that food." She reached into a pocket and removed a shapeless bundle. When she tapped it with her wand it became a corked glass flask filled with clear green liquid. "I had a gifted Healer." She offered the flask to Severus.

He accepted the flask, holding it up before one of the torches to examine its colour. Uncorking it, he cautiously sniffed its contents, frowned, and opened a desk drawer to remove a spool of paper tape and a watchglass. He spilled some potion into the concavity of the watchglass and tore a couple of inches from the paper tape to dip the end into the liquid. As it soaked into and crept up the tape, it split into its constituents, displaying a rainbow of magenta, silver, chartreuse, and other magical primary colours. Some of the bands of colour glowed, and one showered gold sparkles on the watchglass in a tiny soundless spray.

Severus Vanished the wet piece of paper and remaining liquid in the watchglass. He folded his hands on the desktop. "Congratulations. I can't remember the last time someone brought me a potion I couldn't identify in under five minutes."

"You have no idea what it is?" asked Tonks in amazement.

"I know what its ingredients are," he retorted.

"'But knowledge of a potion's constituents is never a predictor of its emergent properties,'" quoted Tonks.

He raised his eyebrows. "You never looked like you were paying that close attention."

"Do you want me to tell you what it is?"

"Of course not." He picked up the flask again. "It's got the sort of analgesic and regenerative properties common to most healing potions. But the proportion of giant cane toad skin..."

Tonks slid off his desk and sat in the chair opposite, watching him ponder. As he held the potion up to the light again, his face lost its customary sneer. He set the flask down and found his quill and a clean parchment and began to take notes.

After several minutes, Severus' writing hand jerked, splattering his hand and the parchment with ink. "Who...gave you this?" he asked, his voice a near-whisper.

"I told you already," replied Tonks. "My Healer. You were standing next to my bed when she did a Diagnostic, and were caught in it. Did you know that?"

"Yes," he whispered, dark eyes huge in a pale face.

"She didn't want to tell me anything at first, citing patient confidentiality and all that, but I pointed out to her that first of all, you're not her patient, and secondly, I'm an Auror who could get her interrogated and Obliviated if necessary.

He nodded approvingly. "Nicely done."

She chuckled. "I knew you would like that part. Anyway, I said I knew about your back problems, and could she help? She told me they developed a potion during the first war to treat severe Cruciatus damage to the spine. So I persuaded her to fetch me some. This is only one dose. That means you have to drink it all at once."

"Yes, I am familiar with the definition of dose."

"And she said you could probably make it yourself."

He held the ink-spattered parchment aloft in triumph. "Not 'probably.' I can." He set the parchment down and grasped the flask, uncorking it. "Why did they keep such a useful potion a secret, though?"

"That's what I said. She said they were told how You-Know-Who punishes his followers. If the potion was kept secret, Death Eaters seeking treatment for their aching backs would be forced to come forwards."

"Withholding medical information for the sake of law enforcement is the tactic of a despot." He sniffed the potion more boldly than before, ventured a small sip, and grimaced.

"Must be revolting, what with toad skin in it," remarked Tonks with a sympathetic cringe.

Severus looked thoughtful. "As revolting Potions ingredients go, toad skin is about in the middle." He lifted the flask. "Cheers."

After he drained the flask, he turned paler and slightly greenish and sat quietly for several moments willing himself not to be sick, forcing himself not to flip through his mental catalogue of Potions ingredients more disgusting than toad skin.

After he trusted himself to speak again, he quipped, "I suppose it's only fair, considering all the disgusting concoctions I've foisted upon others through the years."

Tonks replied quietly, "Being injured and in pain isn't fair."

He looked into her eyes. She was more ambivalent about him than she used to be, but on the whole, she still fancied him. And she was starting to fancy Lupin.

But Lupin wasn't here.

"I'm surprised to see you. After what happened in your hospital room..."

"What happened in my hospital room was what always happens. You got into a fight." She sighed. "Remus is my friend, you know."

"More than you know."

"I may not be a Legilimens, but I'm not stupid," she retorted. "He thinks he's too old for me."

"Then I'm definitely too old for you."

She shrugged. "I'm sure he thinks so. To me, you're both basically the same age even though your birthday is earlier in the year than his."

"You know when my birthday is?"

"I looked it up."

"Why didn't you just ask?"

"Would you have told me."

He snorted. "Of course not. What might you do?"

"I'd make you a big chocolate cake and take it to you at the head table. Then I'd lead all the Slytherins in a chorus of 'Happy Birthday.' Albus would join in, don't you think?"

He looked disgusted. "You realise that would be acceptable grounds for the use of an Unforgivable?"

She stood and came to sit once again on his desk. "Then I would get to arrest you."

"Moody tried to arrest me once. I should hate to do that to your face, whatever it looked like."

She chuckled. "Do you really mean it when you threaten to mutilate my face? Or are you just sweet-talking me?"

He seized her forearms and pulled, sliding her across the polished surface of his desk, scattering parchments hither and thither, until she landed in his lap with a small shriek. Recovering quickly, she wrapped her arms around him and turned her face upwards to kiss high on his neck. He smelled of lye soap and Firewhisky and she caressed the stubble on the juncture of his neck and jaw with her lips, willing herself to push aside the doubts she had about this man as he wrapped his arms about her.

"How's your back?" she murmured.

"What do you think?" he replied, sliding his hands down to her bum and pushing her against his body. "Now you're close enough to tell." He smirked.

She ran her hands down the muscles on either side of his spine, gently massaging as she went. "Your back muscles aren't as tense as before. How do you feel?"

"You tell me," he murmured. Since drinking the potion, the pain in his back had vanished, replaced by the sensation of warm oil trickling down his spine. For the first time in months, he was completely pain-free. And the young woman squirming about in his lap who brought him that wonderful potion was now moving her hips up and down, rubbing against his erection. He felt dizzy with pleasure, but kept his face composed until...

"Hey!" He almost jumped out of the chair.

Tonks grabbed the edge of his desk to prevent herself from falling. She grinned at him in glee. "You're _ticklish?"_

"I'm _not!"_ he protested.

"Yes, you are. When I touched your ribs under your arms..."

He interrupted her with a passionate kiss, at the same time pinning her arms behind her back. "Try and tickle me again..."

"And I'll suffer your displeasure?" She snickered.

He thought of a suitably caustic reply but when she rubbed against him more forcefully, he decided he didn't care if he had the last word. In one motion he spelled the chair further away from the desk, swung one of her legs over and turned her so that she was sitting sideways in his lap instead of straddling it, and slipped one hand under her knees and the other around her back.

He started to lift her when she yelled, "Stop!"

Confused, he settled back in the chair.

She hugged him. "I didn't mean, 'Stop.' I meant don't lift me. You'll bugger your back."

He nodded and released her. She slid sideways from his lap and would have landed on the floor except he grabbed her hands and pulled her upright before standing and leading her through the portal that lead to his private rooms.

**-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-**

I have decided to end this story here. Between two jobs, two kids, and a marriage, I donít have the time to do justice to a very long fic, and this seems to be a natural ending point. Some subsequent chapters Iíd written before HBP were too absurdly AU to use as I prefer to be as canon as possible. But if a plot bunny seizes me with ideas for more, Iíll write them. So this ending point is provisional, for now.


End file.
